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