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

