The daughter of a Jewish doctor talks about her father’s arrest as a politically progressive physician and the family’s subsequent emigration.
Lilith Lehner (1927–1999) was born on a kibbutz in Palestine, where her father Dr Rudolf Eduard Elkan (1895–1983) was living at the time. As the son of a Jewish woman who had converted to Christianity, it was not until the First World War that he learned of his Jewish heritage, which led to his emigration to Palestine, where he worked as a doctor. In 1929, the family moved back to Hamburg. Immediately after the Nazi takeover in 1933, Eduard Elkan was taken into custody but was then allowed a medical furlough, which he used for his escape to England. His wife followed in 1935 with their two daughters Lilith and Naomi. Lilith returned to Germany in 1952, where she met an American lawyer and married him in 1956. The couple then moved to New York. Becoming a psychotherapist in 1956, Lilith Lehner finally retired in 1994.