Racing across the vast expanse of America's heartland, steam engines cut through the silence with their piercing whistles, announcing a new era.

These iron horses, symbols of progress and change, carry both goods and aspirations of those seeking a better life.

The year is 1904 and a young German immigrant, David Kaufmann, drawn to America's promise, steps onto the platform.

He's been convinced his fortunes lie right here in Grand Island, Nebraska.

His suitcase, loaded with more ambition than belongings, suddenly feels heavy.

The excitement of his journey from New York gives way to a conflicting clash between his high hopes from the East and the harsh realities of the West.

As David surveys the dusty streets and the modest buildings of this small, isolated town, his dreams seem to waver like a mirage in the prairie heat.

Yet this ordinary backdrop will be the stage for an extraordinary story.

His story.

One that will change the lives of hundreds and ripple through generations.

In the quiet town of Bad Münstereifel Germany, A new name is etched into the registry on October 8th, 1875, with the birth of David Kaufmann, son of Meyer and Matilda Levy Kaufmann.

He inherits a legacy of faith and family that will guide him across an ocean and into history.

He grew up in Bad Münstereifel, which is between Bonn and Cologne in Germany.

It was and still is a very beautiful community.

The Kaufmann family themselves, they were well off and there was a large extended family in the area.

The family, the extended family, even they were involved in the cattle business, and Meyer was also a butcher.

In an era of expanding public education, David thrived.

He excelled in school, devouring stories of inventors and self-made men which planted seeds of ambition in his young mind.

One of the things that's going on in Germany is a push for education.

And so the Kaufmann children were educated in public schools.

David continues education at the public gymnasium.

What we would consider as high school.

And he graduated from there at the age of 15.

As David came of age, Germany itself was undergoing a transformation.

Rapid industrialization shifted the economic landscape, presenting both potential opportunities and daunting challenges for young men like David.

He then worked as an apprentice clerk in the merchant field for four years, and then he had to serve his one year compulsory service to the army.

All German young men were expected to serve at least one year in the German Army.

After completing his military service, David returned home to find his path seemingly set.

His father had arranged an apprenticeship for him as a window dresser, but David, his mind filled with ambition, opted for more.

He did not want to be a window dresser.

He wanted to be in sales.

So David found a job himself, working in an umbrella factory that was headquartered in Berlin.

It was a bold move that would foreshadow his future as a self-made man.

David charted his own course.

Stepping out of the shadow of his family's expectations and into the bright, uncertain light of his own ambitions.

The early empire, so from 1871 until 1914, so the empire was a very successful time for Germans.

We call that the Gründerjahre.

So the founding years, when many of the big businesses that we still have today in Germany, when they were founded.

Beneath Germany's progress, growing divides emerged.

Young Jewish men like David Kaufmann faced both discrimination and prejudice alongside their opportunities.

Berlin's rise was marked by success but also exclusion, leaving David feeling like an outsider in his own country.

Unfortunately, the umbrella he crafted sheltered others from rain but could not shield him from the chill of growing discrimination.

These obstructions were further compounded by broader demographic shifts.

There's also a population boom going on in Germany during that period of time with about 16 million more people born in Germany.

So you have more people being born with fewer opportunities for them.

At the same time, you have these people here in the United States who had immigrated from Germany.

They were writing back home saying, “We have all of these opportunities here.” “You can even own your own land.” And then there were the US newspapers.

They were printed in German and sent back to Germany to promote all of the great opportunities for people in the United States.

In the face of these challenges, David's focus firmly shifted to the rumors of America, a land where sheer hard work purportedly leads to success, and where faith is confidently upheld as a personal choice, free from any hint of shame.

There are generally three reasons why people consider leaving places.

Economics, political, and religious.

And I think for David, certainly economics was a factor, but there could have been a religious factor there as well.

In 1903, influenced by both push and pull factors, David made the decision to book passage on the S.S.

Zeeland.

This marked the start of a chapter in his life that would ultimately define his legacy.

Ellis Island was the gateway where millions of dreams collided with American shores.

David Kauffman, one person in this massive wave of humanity, found himself engulfed by New York City's overwhelming energy and relentless ambition.

Landing a position as a clerk and window dresser at Abraham and Strauss in Brooklyn, David worked long shifts with meager pay - $6 per week.

Though grueling, this position provided David with a crash course in American commerce and consumer culture.

Then fate intervened.

S. N. Wolbach, a businessman from Grand Island, Nebraska, paused at a window display that David hadn't created.

A case of mistaken identity was about to change everything.

And so Wolbach saw this window display, he went inside and was looking for the person who put the display together.

And he thought it was David Kaufmann's work.

But David hadn't actually done that display.

But Wolbach might have recognized some potential in David.

As they were talking, David may have shared his ambitions and his dreams.

And S. N., who was a really good salesman, likely said, “The community where I'm from” “is a German community founded by German immigrants.” “You would be surrounded by German people there” “who speak your language, and there are all these” “opportunities in Nebraska just waiting for you.” Wolbach vividly described Grand Island as a city on the brink of greatness with limitless potential, fueled by the Union Pacific Railroad's transcontinental connection where the pioneer spirit still existed.

He even mentioned rumors of moving the nation's capital there, right in the heart of America.

The reason Grand Island is where it is, there was some talk, mainly in New York and in Davenport, Iowa.

Davenport, Iowa was where the Grand Island Company originated, and their mission was to come out here and start a settlement because the talk was they were going to move the nation's capital to the center of the nation rather than have it up on the East Coast in Washington, D.C.

So confident was S. N. Wolbach that he even offered to buy the train ticket.

As David considered Wolbach's words, New York's din faded into the background.

Grand Island emerged not as a retreat, but as a launch pad for his dreams.

With renewed hope, he accepted the job offer and purchased another ticket.

So a simple misunderstanding would set into motion a chain of events, a ripple effect transforming not only his life, but a community and the lives of hundreds.

He was so unimpressed by the dirt streets, the unpaved streets, the frequent dust storms, and the unimpressive buildings.

There were no buildings over two stories tall.

It was very unimpressive for this man, who came from a metropolitan area in Germany and who had been living in New York City, and then all of a sudden, he was plopped down in the middle of nowhere.

Alone in his room and disillusioned, David Kaufmann takes up his pen and writes to his brother in Germany.

He actually wrote back to his brother in Germany, and he's like, “You've got to help get me out of here.” “Find me something, anything.” “I will come back to Germany.” “Just find me a job.” The letter to his brother is more than a plea for help.

It's an admission of defeat.

New York's crowded streets and Grand Island's dust storms seemed equally far from the land of opportunity he had imagined.

Yet, despite his disappointment, a sense of duty anchors David.

He resolves to repay Mr.

Wolbach's generosity and fulfill his obligations at Wolbach and Sons, at least until a position in Germany materializes.

And while he was waiting for his brother to write him back with a job offer, he actually fell in love with the community, and he decided to stay.

As time went by and with each interaction, David's perspective began to shift.

The unfamiliar faces of Grand Island started to rely on his advice and appreciate his presence.

Each thank you, each moment of genuine connection fortified David's sense of belonging.

His role at Wolbach's Store evolved into something more than mere employment.

It became a bridge to a new life and mentorship under Samuel N. Wolbach.

David discovered something he wasn't expecting.

Sometimes home finds you.

With the support and guidance from Wolbach and the community's acceptance, David's decision to stay in Grand Island was solidified.

Embracing the promise of America he opened his own five and dime store, planting deeper roots in the town that had become his new home.

He decided he would start a five and dime store based on the Woolworth model.

He felt there was a need for it here in the community.

Within a few years, Kaufmann's was thriving.

In 1910, David fully embraced his new country, becoming a U.S.

citizen.

But his endeavors reached beyond retail.

As a member of the local bank board, he helped steer Grand Island's financial future.

His reputation for integrity and vision grew along with his commitment to the community.

He became a community builder.

He opened three more stores and movie theater, started a bank, and helped build an impressive 11 story hotel in Grand Island.

He was one of the founders of the Hall County Historical Society, serving as our longtime treasurer.

He was also involved in a lot of other organizations in the community, including the Liederkranz, which was a German cultural club.

He was even the president of the Hall County Fair.

David was a civic leader and he was a philanthropist.

He was involved, of course, in business organizations like the Chamber of Commerce and the Nebraska Retailers Association.

But he was also involved in charitable organizations like Saint Francis Hospital, the Red Cross, and the Salvation Army.

People knew they could count on his help.

In fact, when the Sisters of Saint Francis needed to build housing for nurses, David led the fundraising campaign for them.

And then there were his small acts of kindness.

At his store, the Kaufmann Store in downtown Grand Island, at the end of the day, he would leave food and clothing on the loading dock, and those people in the community who were in need or homeless began to depend on his generosity.

They could, if they needed something, go to the Kaufmann store, and there would be something waiting there for them.

During the holidays, he went out of his way to organize local restaurants to provide meals for those in need.

He selflessly devoted his time and resources to support the Catholic Hospital, the Salvation Army, and countless other causes.

Earning him the title, “Mr.

Grand Island.” David's life took on new meaning in 1924 when he married Celia Campbell, a skilled milliner who worked at his store.

Their union brought not only personal happiness, but also a shared passion for community.

Despite building his life in America, he continued to maintain strong ties to his homeland.

He made multiple trips back to Germany after that to go see his family and friends, and what I've read, is people in Germany remembered him and his visits.

They called him Uncle David.

They remembered Uncle David coming and sharing stories about America, and they remembered his promise that if they ever wanted to come to the United States, he would help them.

His frequent trips to Germany and thoughtful gifts were constant reminders of the opportunities that lay in America.

With each visit, David also made a promise.

Should anyone choose to join him in America, he would be their steadfast supporter.

Through the 1920s and early 30s, a creeping unease settled over the Jewish communities of Germany.

A firebrand politician named Adolf Hitler was making headlines with his fiery rhetoric and virulent anti-Semitism.

Once dismissed as the ravings of a political outlier, his inflammatory speeches were now finding fertile ground in the German consciousness.

You had the Nazi Party rise in popularity because they promised the Germans order and stability, and especially economic stability and social order.

So ultimately, this is how the Nazis then, after 1929, made inroads into the middle classes.

David observed this alarming transformation during his periodic visits home and through newspaper headlines, radio broadcasts, and most disturbingly, increasingly anxious letters from family and friends.

For Jewish families like the Kahns and the Levys, daily life, once filled with simple joys, and shared traditions, was about to be severely disrupted.

I remember where I lived in Germany, and the cattle lived with people.

and if we had to go to the synagogue, it would be across the Mosel River in Luxembourg.

And it was a small synagogue which catered to many small towns around this area.

My dad remembered living in Germany.

He remembered going with his father over the bridge to synagogue on Saturdays.

He remembered that the cows were on the first floor of the house, because the cows were on the first floor, and the house was built above it.

My uncle Marcel remembers walking with his father.

We would go to the Sabbath service, and I remember holding on to his little finger as we walked along, and I knew the way, but I couldn't find it anymore today.

I played with a lot of kids my age, and my religion never was brought up, and we got along well.

The story as my father told it to me was that my grandmother was pregnant with my father, and my grandfather was walking down the street, and someone called him the equivalent ... They called him a slur.

Apparently someone made some nasty comments about his Judaism, and he didn't care for that, and apparently he was involved in a brouhaha and then was arrested for that.

I didn't know whether he got out the next day, or when my mother had to bail him out.

If you were Jewish, things got worse each year, more restrictions and so on.

Martha and Leopold Levy were married on the 25th, and my parents were married the next day.

Of course, the women used the same wedding dress.

That night, there were stones thrown through the bedroom window, and my mother was so upset, and she said, “I think we need to leave.” And my dad thought, “Oh, really?” Well, that wasn't enough, because the next day when she went to go shopping, I believe in Kurf, that someone spit and called her dirty Jew.

So then she said to my dad, “We have to get out of here.” And by chance, my Uncle David sent my parents a radio for their wedding gift.

And my mother was thinking, hm.

So she remembered that as a little girl, he came and visited Germany, and he visited his his family, and he came to my grandparents' house.

So he said to her, “Feo, if you ever want to come to the States,” “I think you'd really like it.” “Send me a letter, and I'll get you here.” My mother thought about it, and she said to my dad, “I'm writing him.” So she did.

It took Uncle David ‘til '36 to get it all organized And when my parents wanted to leave, my dad said, “I'm not going.” And then my mother said, “Well, I am.” And then he said, “Oh, I guess I'm going too.” My Uncle Isi and Aunt Feo left for the United States the year before we did.

My Aunt Feo says, “I'm not going to live through this.” And so she talked her husband into moving, and they did.

And the night before they left, Mom was 26, Dad was 30.

They took their motorcycle, and I think they went into Luxembourg to visit friends, not thinking.

On the way back, the Germans said, “Why did you leave?” “Why did you go there?” “Why are you now coming back?” “Is there anything going on?

Are you taking anything?” “What are you doing?” And finally, my parents got back into Germany, and I'm sure they packed their bags, and they were ready to go.

My parents went to Stuttgart, where the American embassy was in 1937, and it was not until a year later, in 1938 in June, that we left for the United States.

Incidentally, my wife's family also left at that same time, and you had to go to Stuttgart, where the American Embassy was to make the necessary preparations.

One of my favorite things I remember from my dad when he lived in Germany, he was a professional soccer player.

He played professional soccer, and my mom and her friends would go watch the boys play, men play soccer.

And that's how they met.

And they fell in love.

And he had a motorcycle, a motorbike.

And he tooled around there.

until he met my mom, Selma.

And when he got married at a young age, I think there were 22.

Yeah.

22.

22 when she got married.

But they had a good life over there.

They owned a store, like a general store, a bakery and everything.

And my grandparents, they sold cows and stuff.

They were in a cattle business a little.

But they were doing really, really well until it was time for Hitler to join in.

And they had friends in Germany, which wouldn't even talk to them anymore.

I guess that was the rule that if you were Jewish, don't participate in any of their activities.

Their doctor wasn't allowed to go into their house.

They weren't allowed to worship.

They weren't allowed to worship, of course.

Yeah.

And life became very, very difficult.

During the Weimar Republic, The Nazis come up, and they vilify the Jews in their propaganda.

They rouse up the young and the unemployed, and radicalize them, and they polarize the political spectrum, Either you are with us, or you against us.

Either you're for Germany, or you're an enemy.

And the Nazis made violence okay again during their election campaigns in the Weimar Republic.

So political violence and, you know, just beating a Jew up in the street, The Nazis made that okay.

It wasn't okay to begin with.

In the early months of 1933, as the fragile Weimar Republic faltered, Hitler ascended to the chancellorship of Germany, dramatically shifting Germany's course.

Exploiting national crises and public fear, the Nazis presented themselves as the sole remedy to political and economic instability.

Quickly after his appointment, Hitler invoked Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution to seize total control.

After Hitler did that in March of 1933, he basically eliminated democracy, and it never came back until 1945.

So with democracy gone, you now find yourself in a new German state.

And now Hitler said, “This is the Third Reich.” “It'll last a thousand years,” without democracy.

What happened is that the party program of the Nazis also included anti-Semitism.

So the Nazis knew exactly that they couldn't just start rounding up Jews and killing them.

They knew that.

So what they had to do is take away political rights.

Nuremberg Laws came first, in which the Jewish people in Germany lost their citizenship.

So everybody has to give up their passport.

They get a passport back.

But there's a big J stamped into it, and every Jewish citizen, male and female, gets an extra name, a Jewish sounding name that they added.

You can't marry a Jew anymore.

If you're married to one, then you also may get persecuted.

You're not allowed to sell stuff food, for instance, to everybody else in the community.

You may pollute the community.

Unfortunately, when they voted democracy away in 1933, there was no more peaceful opposition that you could voice.

So if you said something about Nazi policies, you ended up in a concentration camp.

And a concentration camp is different from an extermination camp that happened later in the war.

And my mother said to me many times, “Some of the people, Dorothy,” “had to do what they had to do” because of the fact that if they didn't, Hitler would make their family suffer.

He'd make them watch their kids die.

You know, his people were ruthless.

They had no, no ... No soul, maybe would be a good thing to say.

I mean, it was just horrible.

My mother often said that they may not have moved had they not had children.

And I remember visiting a place called Kaisel Esch, where I had an aunt and uncle who had no kids and did not move and succumbed to the Holocaust.

My dad would write David and explain to him, you know, “It's getting really rough out here, and if we don't ...” “If we can't depart here, we're going to probably die here.” This is when German Jews, who already marked by a passport, they were already forced to wear the yellow star of David, not Germans anymore.

People on the fringes of society.

They were not allowed to go shopping where Germans go.

They were not allowed to sit on a park bench where Germans sit.

And at this point of time, people realized that this is not good.

They use violence, and they do not hesitate to kill.

So at this point of time, many Jews were realizing, we need to get out of here.

So anxiety, fear.

So anxiety, fear.

We need to try to make it out, right?

And I think at this point of time, Mr.

Kaufmann stepped in.

He knew what was going on.

You know, he had probably correspondence.

They knew.

There were rumors about, you know, what was what was about to happen.

David Kaufmann saw signs of a looming catastrophe that many did not recognize or chose to ignore.

For David, the path forward was clear.

He would open the doors to America for anyone who would say yes, offering a lifeline to anyone willing to grab it.

David Kaufmann was saving lives from a slaughter that had not yet begun.

But navigating the U.S.

immigration system was a tough challenge.

Strict quotas and bureaucratic hurdles turned each application into an obstacle course.

Every form, every signature, every document became a potential roadblock.

By the 1930s, the U.S.

had implemented a quota system.

Germany and Austria combined had about 27,000 spots a year.

However, the need far exceeded the demand.

By 1938, there were about 139,000 names on the list, and by 1939, it had skyrocketed to over 300,000.

The process was long and extremely difficult.

After submitting your initial application, you needed to have two copies of everyone's birth certificates your military revenues, any governmental or personal records that you had.

And it was essential that you had a financial sponsor.

And this is where David came in.

The sponsor, who had to be a U.S citizen, was not just a formality.

They had to prove they had the means to support the immigrants and ensure they wouldn't be a burden on the government.

This required bank statements, tax records, and letters from employers.

And just filling out the application didn't guarantee you anything.

It just put you in the queue and you would wait weeks, months, or even years before your application would come up.

This was the case with Isi and Feo Kahn.

They applied in 1929, but they had to wait until 1936 before their application was approved.

Within a four month window, every applicant would be called for an interview with the U.S.

consular office located in Germany.

They had to pass a medical examination with a U.S.

government approved physician.

They needed to obtain police certificates from every country they had lived in since the age of 16.

They had to secure exit visas from Germany and every country they would pass through on their journey.

A single misstep, a document out of place, and the process would fall apart.

They would have to start all over again, if they ever got another chance at all.

It was extremely challenging.

The process itself was so difficult that by 1941, 40% of the 27,000 quota allocated to Germany went unfulfilled because people couldn't overcome the hurdles.

And one of the names that people have heard, I'm sure, when we're talking about the Holocaust, is Anne Frank.

and her father.

Otto was one of those who tried to get his family out of Germany starting in 1938.

So the same time that David Kaufmann is helping all of these families escape from Germany, Otto Frank is trying to get his family out of Germany as well.

From 1938 to 1942, Otto Frank kept trying and he could not get one of those spots.

He was in the queue, but he could never get a spot to get his family out of Germany.

And in 1942 they went into hiding.

And then, of course, we all know what happened to Anne Frank and the rest of her family after that.

For the average American in the 1930s, still reeling from the Great Depression, sponsoring even a single immigrant was a monumental undertaking.

Now imagine taking on this task not for one person, but for over 200.

That's what makes David Kaufmann's efforts so extraordinary, so plainly superhuman.

During the Great Depression, a lot of banks folded, the stock market crashed.

People didn't have money to buy things in stores.

In fact, even in his own department store, when the depression hit, he cut all of his prices of his goods in the store down to wholesale or lower.

And he told his manager, “We probably aren't going to make any money this year.” “In fact, we'll probably lose money for a year.” And in the midst of it, he's sponsoring these people to come from Germany.

Beyond offering a route to the good life, he was orchestrating a large scale rescue mission from this small, isolated town of Grand Island, Nebraska.

On November 9th, 1938, the situation in Germany reached a terrifying new level of violence.

The night of broken glass not only shattered windows and lives, but any remaining delusions about the Nazis' intentions.

Back in the days, the Germans and the Nazis called this “Kristallnacht.” The Night of Broken Glass.

We don't say that anymore.

It's the pogrom night in which the Nazis, they fostered a pogrom, a night in which Germans destroyed businesses, set synagogues on fire.

The firefighters came out, made sure that the buildings were not affected.

But the synagogues were burned down.

It was Nazi organizations, the Hitler Youth, the Gestapo, you know, not regular people.

The regular people, some of them were appalled when they woke up the next morning and they saw what happened.

The Jewish community in Germany was shocked.

There were suicides, you know, they were, “Why are my neighbors doing this to me?” “I'm a German.

I fought in the First World War.” David was horrified with the news, even more so as he discovered that in Bad Münstereifel, his brother, Andreas Kaufmann's home and the synagogue he led were not spared.

Arrested and imprisoned, Andreas witnessed firsthand the brutal reality of the Nazi regime's intentions.

Moving quickly, David implemented the same rescue apparatus he had used for hundreds of others and was able to find safe passage to America for his brother and family in 1939.

In 1939, they started rounding up the German Jews and sent them to ghettos in Poland.

The original idea was that Jews were supposed to be deported to Madagascar.

I know it's a weird, almost sounds like a conspiracy theory, but no, the Nazis thought not about, you know, killing them all to begin with.

They wanted to ship them to Madagascar, this island in front of the African coast.

You know, they were thinking, the Nazis were thinking, “Well, we could use all of their resources, you know,” “members, some of them are bankers, doctors, lawyers.” “They have financial assets.” David Kaufmann's mission of mercy began long David Kaufmann's mission of mercy began long David Kaufmann's mission of mercy began long before the full extent of the Nazi threat materialized.

Ship manifests reveal that Kaufmann had already sponsored five individuals before 1936.

These early efforts laid the groundwork for what was to come, but it was in 1936 that Kaufmann's rescue operation truly began to take shape.

Reinforced by a few key allies, Feo Khan, whom he had helped bring over in 1936, settled in Grand Island and became a crucial link.

And then there was Max Levy, a first cousin who maintained constant contact with Kaufmann from abroad.

Both Feo and Max became vital conduits, providing David with names of those in desperate need of sponsorship.

And so my mother would take a few names and go into his office, and say, “Please, Uncle David, would you sign the papers?” For him, it was a big risk.

He was responsible for all of the 90 families.

He promised that if they ever did anything or needed anything, he would financially take care of it.

And then my mother kept going back, and I think she pleaded with him to please sign a few more and a few more.

Aunt Feo, as we used to call her, she had a cousin that was in Grand Island, Nebraska that brought Feo and Isi, Dorothy's parents, over, and so the family wrote to Feo and said, “You know, can you please get us out?” It wasn't just like that, call up your friend and, “Hey, I need Max to come over here.” I mean, he had to put in many, many hours to get all the people released from from Germany.

Knowing my father Max, the coordinated paperwork that they could come over here and my mom still tells the story before they left that they had to leave their parents behind.

And I think about that a lot, saying, God help me ... if you're in your 20s, early 20s and you got to say goodbye to your parents, and never see them again, I still choke up from it.

I know his mom said she used to go down to the pier and wait almost every day for the ship to come in, and she said, “I was never so happy” “when they finally got here.” So David came through again in several months and got her the correct paperwork to come over to the United States.

Uncle David had the key.

He had the way of getting my family and others out of Germany.

He had the key.

My mother had the list.

And Uncle David, being a righteous man, knew that was the correct thing to do.

And every family that came over, he gave them a $50 check, and they all cashed it except for one family.

My dad never cashed it.

So equate that to today.

That's about $80,000 out of his own pocket.

That he gave them all this seed money to get them started.

That doesn't count the jobs that he gave people, or the loans that he made to people, or his time and effort in doing all the paperwork to try to get them over here.

So he really made a financial investment in all of them as well.

But everybody else got over because of David, and David gave them all the money to come over here, and he gave the money when they got here, too.

I think he may have found them housing, too.

In the event of a natural default, he would be responsible.

That's quite an undertaking for someone to do that for so many people.

And we were grateful for that.

We started to really reflect on how fortunate we were and how we got here, when so many others didn't.

The family knew what was going on, and we also knew what was going on in in Germany, you know, all of a sudden you wouldn't hear from relatives anymore.

And you had hoped it wouldn't be that.

But it was.

I knew that we were very lucky.

I knew that I owed my life and my parents owed their lives to Uncle David.

It takes a genius and a kind individual to do what he did, and not everybody would live up to that level.

David was a great man.

He had a lot of compassion, but the humanity, didn't matter if you were family, friends, or people he didn't even know.

You needed help, and he would help you.

We knew what he did.

And how do you say, “Thank you.” Or show appreciation to someone who did as much as he did, basically saving your life?

They all came over because of David.

They didn't come over and couldn't get out without David.

So yeah, you know, I know over 200 people, and I bet you 30 or 40 of them were connected to my family.

Whoever saves one life, it is as if he has saved an entire world.

For David Kaufmann, this wasn't a saying.

It was something he lived more than 200 times.

All the families he helped created new lives for themselves Among them, two significant stories in medicine stand out.

One of these individuals was Dr.

Guinter Kahn.

His discovery would one day help millions regain something they feared was gone.

But his own story, like so many, began not with discovery, but with flight, told here by his daughter.

My dad remembered living in Germany.

He remembered getting on the boat, and he remembered seeing the Statue of Liberty for the first time and feeling the boat tilt because everyone ran to that side of the boat and then taking a train to Omaha.

They arrived on July 4th and apparently my grandfather said in German, “How can any beast or animal live in this heat?” He was very grateful that he grew up in Omaha, because it was a town that gave him a great education, Aunt Dorothy's mother, Aunt Feo, as we used to call her.

She had a cousin that was in Grand Island, Nebraska that brought Feo and Izzy, Dorothy's parents, over.

And so the family wrote to Feo and said, “Can you please get us out?” And she went straight over to David Kaufmann, and he signed any papers that Aunt Feo put in front of him.

Everyone in the family contributed from the time that they were small boys.

Uncle Marcel and my dad had shoeshine boxes and they would go shine shoes, and sometimes they would get a whole quarter as a tip, and they would actually make more in a day than their father would working.

He also had a newspaper route through medical school.

He went to school.

He graduated high school in three years.

He went to school.

He graduated high school in three years.

He went to college.

He graduated college in three years.

He went to medical school there.

My dad was the acting head of the dermatology department at the University of Colorado.

He left and he went to Denver.

That's where he met my mom, and that's where he discovered Rogaine.

He was called in for a consult because someone in the cardiology ward the woman was starting to grow hair everywhere.

It looked like a werewolf.

My dad was asking about all the medicine she's on, and he was like, “I wonder what would happen” “if we started applying this stuff topically.” So he was just a curious guy.

And instead of, you know, going through all the right channels and creating a huge study, he just started mashing up the pills and creating his own formulas with different solutions and testing them on himself, on his brother, Uncle Marcel, on his residents, Anyone who would do it.

He just gave him these solutions and was like, “Put a few drops of this on, and “with a Band-Aid, and let me know what happens.” So he got a rash from it.

Everyone else grew little patches of hair.

That's how the story goes.

His legacy continues to support the University of Nebraska at Omaha, because he was forever grateful for getting an education there that was mostly free that he could afford that gave him a world class education both for undergrad and for medical school.

He also supports a hospital in Israel, Rambam Hospital in Haifa.

The Jewish Federation, the Anti-Defamation League is another organization he supported.

I think it's so easy to say, oh, it didn't, you know, take that much for him to do.

He just had to sign some papers, and everyone could have forgotten about him.

But, you know, my father really ingrained in me that, no, we cannot stop thinking and thanking Aunt Feo and Uncle David, because without them, we wouldn't be here.

Literally would not be here.

Like so many rescued by David Kaufmann, Dr.

Khan was given a chance to invent, cure, and give.

Though David never had children, his decision to help others brought new life into his own family, including his grand nephew, Dr.

Scott Kaufmann.

At the Mayo Clinic, Dr.

Scott Kaufmann researches and fights cancer every day.

His family's fight for survival started decades earlier when his father, Ernst Kaufmann, witnessed something in Germany that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

My dad, Ernst, grew up in Münstereifel, Germany.

After he finished high school, what they call the gymnasium, he moved to Mainz and started training as a clerk on the stock exchange.

Then in early 1935, something awful happened.

One morning he woke up to find all the Jewish stockbrokers in Cologne had been lynched.

He never really got over that.

Even 20 or 30 years later, when I was a kid, he'd still have nightmares about it.

That single morning changed everything.

He realized pretty quickly things weren't going well for the Jews in Germany.

So he started sneaking over the border into Belgium and set up a post office box there, just to keep his mail out of the hands of the German authorities.

From Belgium he'd write to Uncle David, who used to visit the family a lot when my dad was growing up.

He told him what was happening and asked him if there was any way he could come to the States.

Hidden in each letter to Uncle David was an urgent question.

Could America replace what Germany was destroying?

As far as I know, my dad immigrated in 1936.

He was one of the first relatives Uncle David sponsored.

Isidor and Feo Kahn came just before him.

At 21, Ernst Kaufmann stood at Hamburg's docks with a single suitcase, carrying what he could, leaving what he loved.

He went from Hamburg to New York, got processed at Ellis Island, and then, after a few days took the train to Grand Island.

He worked in Uncle David's five and dime store as a clerk for a couple of years.

My dad always said that it was pretty typical.

Most of the people Uncle David sponsored would start off working in the store, then moved on to jobs and lives in other places.

This became the pattern.

Kaufmann's Five and Dime was a landing place for dozens of families.

They found steady work and learned the language and customs.

Most importantly, they came to understand what they saw in David Kaufmann's life.

In America, you must reinvent yourself.

180 miles northeast, Ernst was about to do just that.

Eventually, my dad opened his own Kaufmann's Five and Dime in Sioux City, Iowa around 1940.

He started it with a loan from Uncle David and paid him back right away.

Although Ernst found personal success in 1940, David had already faced his most personal test.

The year before, Scott's grandparents, Andreas and Frieda Kaufmann, along with three other relatives, bribed border guards and escaped Germany.

Andreas was David's own brother, and it was David's sponsorship that brought all five of them to safety in America.

You know, in a lot of ways, Uncle David was like a grandfather to me.

My grandfather Andreas died of cancer long before I was born, so I never really knew him.

But we'd visit Uncle David, he and his wife Madeline, and my grandfather's sister, Johanna, once a year in Grand Island.

It really didn't hit me at first What Uncle David had done for our family.

It just sort of dawned on me over time at bar mitzvahs, weddings, funerals.

Every time we saw cousins with the last name of Kahn or Levy.

And all of them called him Uncle David.

They all trace their coming to America back to him.

Stories about Uncle David stuck with me.

It really helped shape how I see things.

Like the importance of listening, really listening to people you're helping, the value of working hard, the need to help people who are less fortunate than you, and doing it quietly in a way that lets them keep their dignity.

These are things that I've really tried to follow in my own life, my work with patients and trainees.

If I could talk with Uncle David today, I'd thank him for his incredible generosity.

I'd tell him he should be proud of what he accomplished, of all the people he saved, and how those people went on to build lives as teachers, doctors, all kinds of professionals.

We all try to make him proud, and we try to keep his generosity going by passing it forward to others.

Today, every life Dr.

Scott Kaufmann saves continues what David started, one person helping another survive.

If I could say one thing to my Uncle David, I would say, “Uncle David, thank you.” “Thank you for saving my life.” When I think back on the story of how my family was lucky enough to come over, All I can say is, thank God someone had the courage to do what they did.

I think people assume that one person in a small town in the middle of nowhere, what could they possibly do?

I think this really shows that every person has an impact on the world.

And that's exactly what is the example of David Kaufmann, the example of the community in Grand Island that as a result of the rescuing, the sponsorship, the help to the number of people that they did, it grew.

And so it's limitless.

what happens by the result of standing up, speaking out, saving one person.

He's what we would like to be when we grow up.

Oskar Schindler had a list and David Kaufman had a heart.

which I think really says a lot that he did it truly from his heart.

He didn't, with no expectation of no grandeur of “What's in it for me?” But really, from his heart.

Uncle David was a humble man.

Uncle David was a righteous man.

He didn't need the glory it just came automatically.

He just wanted to work hard.

And I think he was so thankful to this country that allowed him to succeed and prosper and be helpful to the rest.

And one person like Uncle David, one person like my mother, can make a difference.

So then maybe I can make a difference.

So whenn Germany fell and the war ended in the mid to late 1940s, David Kaufmann is 60.

He was in the golden years of life.

The last two decades of his life, he lost his first wife, but found love again with his second wife, Madeline.

He had young, trusted managers that kept the daily operations going for him in the store, the movie theater, and his bank.

He was really able to sit back and enjoy his work.

David and Madeline traveled the world.

He took joy in the families that he helped escape from Germany to the United States.

He enjoyed watching them grow and flourish, especially their children.

So when David sat back at the end of his life and reflected back on all he had done, he could truly say that he came to the United States to build a better life for himself.

But he ended up building a better world for others.

From a small office in Grand Island, Nebraska, he rescued over 200 people by signing their names next to his.

Each signature a risk, each risk, a second chance.

Today, families gather to celebrate birthdays, the ones that almost never happened.

Children and grandchildren have built homes, opened businesses, improved lives through medical discoveries, and raised families of their own.

Most never met him, but they're here because he was there.

During his life he received no recognition and never asked for it.

He ran a five and dime.

He balanced ledgers.

He believed in decency, and when the time came, he didn't hesitate.

He saw danger on the horizon and used what he had his name, his means, his reputation to help people no one else was helping.

In a world full of bystanders, he became a participant.

And that's how you build a better world.

What leads into the one incident I have to tell about David Kaufmann.

I went to town one day with my dad, and I was going to buy another book for my collection, and so I took my whole resources.. In my little red purse was probably a dollar and a half in change at the most.

And when I went to buy a book, I discovered I didn't have my purse.

I'd lost it someplace in the store.

so we went up to see if somebody might have turned in the purse.

And David Kaufmann himself came to the window to see what we needed.

And I said, “Well, I lost my purse,” “Had it possibly been turned in?” and sure enough, it had been.

So I was very relieved.

But what I really remember was that he said, “How much money was in it?” and I said, “A dollar 35,” and how carefully he took that money out, put it in his hand, and counted out exactly that.

That money was still in there, because if someone had taken out anything, he was going to replace it and make sure I didn't suffer a loss.

And I just always was grateful.

That kindness and consideration, I just felt that's the kind of a man he was.

One time my dad was walking to the dime store.

Okay, so he's walking, and a truck goes by that carries chickens, and a couple chickens fell out, and he grabbed the chickens and took them home.

And he said to my mother, “Only in America” “does your food come to you!” Only in America.

Did you and your brother have side jobs, odd jobs?

Absolutely.

We sold magazines and even shined shoes and anything to bring an extra dollar.

Was there any squabbles between you and your brother?

Not necessarily.

I think we got along reasonably well.

He was taller and bigger than I, but I was tougher.

My earliest memories of Kaufmann's were the mezzanine, where they had fish for sale, tropical fish and things for fish tanks.

They had records.

They had a record shop up there.

You could listen to the latest 45s up there and pick out the one you wanted to buy.

They had a little booth for that.

And then on the main floor was all the stuff that Mom and Dad were interested in.

And if you went clear up to the top, they had a lot of toys up there, nickel and dime toys that you could buy.

And it was a lot of fun.

It was always kind of a magical place when I was a kid.

David Kaufmann's picture is on the wall.

Why is that?

Why do you have that picture up?

That's history.

Yeah.

It's history.

That's kind of the founder a little bit, and how we run this store.

You know, do the right thing, take the customer to the product, etc.

And, you know, that's doing the right thing.

That's, you know, we admire him.

That was dad's mentor.

And so that's why his picture's on the wall.