16 | MAY 27 • 2021

OUR COMMUNITY

continued from page 15

certainly an interesting con-
versation starter. I just wasn’t
prepared to learn the incident
included a surprising second
biter.
Four-year old Ron Kagan
was nestled in the backseat of
his parent’s car. The suburban
Boston family had just picked
up their new puppy — a boxer.
“We were bringing him home,
and I couldn’t have been more
excited. His name was Bobby.
I was pulling on anything and
everything. I mean, there were
ears and there was a tail. I was
just sort of, you know, becom-
ing a scientist exploring this
creature.
”
Bobby the baby boxer
returned the favor. “I guess I

did something wrong because
he bit me,
” Kagan said. “But my
response instantaneously was
to bite him back.
” Which little
Ron did. “So, I guess that was
the start,
” he said, before add-
ing wryly, “I really don’t do that
anymore with animals.
”

JEWISH IDENTITY
Kagan’s youth included his
family’s attendance at a Boston
temple. “I was bar mitzvahed,
but religion was never really
anything particularly signifi-
cant for me. It was really what
my parents and, in particular,
my mother had gone through
that I think shaped actually
quite a bit of my life.
”
What Kagan’s mother “had

gone through” was surviving
the harrowing life-and-death
journey as one of the 699
mostly Jewish children evac-
uated from Czechoslovakia to
Britain in 1939 on the eve of
WWII. It was the escape from
the impending Holocaust that
would come to be known as the
Kindertransport. Left behind
were Kagan’s maternal grand-
parents — his grandmother
who perished in Auschwitz and
his grandfather who perished
in Dachau.
“My mother was one of Sir
Nicholas Winton’s children,
”
Kagan said. Winton was the
heroic British banker and
humanitarian who, at peril to
his own life, formed the British
Committee for Refugees from
Czechoslovakia, the forerun-
ner of Kindertransport. He
was referred to as the “British
Schindler” and was knighted
by Queen Elizabeth in 2003.
Winton was also rewarded
with a long life, passing away in
2015 at 106.
More than 70 years after
the fateful train ride that
would save his mother’s life,

Ron Kagan arranged for an
emotional and unforgettable
reunion. “I took my mom and
son to England to meet Sir
Nicolas Winton,
” Kagan told
me. “We had an amazing expe-
rience.
”

WAR ZOOKEEPER
Ron Kagan has kept the mem-
ory of his mother and grand-
parents’ destinies close to his
heart. It was in their honor that
at age 21, the self-proclaimed
pacifist made a life-altering —
and potentially life-threatening
— decision in 1973 that would
be an homage to his family’s
Jewish heritage and, in an
unsuspecting way, expedite his
zoological experience.
“When the Yom Kippur War
broke out, I dropped every-
thing to go there,
” Kagan said.
Dropping everything included
dropping out of his final year at
the University of Massachusetts
Amherst where he was study-
ing zoology.
“I had other friends who
were talking about going the
following summer to vol-
unteer on a kibbutz or do

“WHEN THE YOM KIPPUR
WAR BROKE OUT, I DROPPED

EVERYTHING TO GO THERE.”

— RON KAGAN

Polk Penguin Conservation Center

DETROIT ZOO