Corpus Christi, TX – Hundreds Attend Funeral Of Prominent Holocaust Survivor

Corpus Christi, TX – Rabbi Ken Roseman walked slowly past a row of black clad Kane family members, clipping the black ribbons pinned on their clothing with tiny silver scissors — a Jewish ritual mourning the loss of their patriarch, Sam Kane.

About 500 people attended a graveside service at Seaside Memorial Park for Kane — a family man and prominent business owner, who died Sunday at age 90.

Near Kane’s plain wooden casket adorned only with a Star of David, the family sat on the front row with son Harold Kane on one end and son Jerry Kane on the other. Behind them stood the grandchildren and great grandchildren who the elder Kane adored.

Kane overcame the Nazi occupation of Europe, was a World War II resistance fighter and survived the loss of much of his family to the Auschwitz Concentration Camp. He came to America in 1948 to start over, with his wife, Aranka, who preceded him in death.

Kane embodied the American dream, building a tiny meat counter into Sam Kane Beef Processors, Inc., the seventh largest meatpacker in the world. He shook hands with presidents and counted some of the world’s most powerful as his friends.

Businessmen knew they didn’t have to have a contract with Kane because he always honored his word, Rabbi Shimon Lazaroff of Houston said.

“Proud Jew, a proud righteous man, everybody loved him,” Lazaroff said.

“Everybody love Sam?” Lazaroff asked the crowd, which included county and city leaders.

“Yea,” they answered in unison.

“Anybody, God forbid, have a bad word to say about Sam?” Lazaroff asked.

A chorus of nos followed.

Lazaroff spoke of the awful times in the old country when the Nazis prowled and there was never enough to eat. A place where friends and family members died torturous deaths and a time where Kane and his brother Bernard were forced to live in a bunker.

“To come out and be a bigger man …,” Lazaroff said with his voice trailing off.

Yet Kane was a bigger man, speaker after speaker testified during the two-hour funeral Tuesday.

“Sam believed when you pursued some goal, some path, some commitment that you never gave up,” Roseman said.

Kane gave of his time and money supporting a variety of causes including the state of Israel and his faith. He was a loving and kind husband, father and grandfather.

“Family for Sam was another evidence of hope realized,” Roseman said of Kane’s devotion.

Kane’s grandson David Kane stood and walked to the casket. Tears welled in his eyes. He recalled spending time alone in his grandfather office Monday, remembering earlier years when he played army men on the floor as a 5-year-old. Sam Kane, known to his grandchildren as “Abba,” handed over a green, rubber eraser to use as a makeshift tank.

When David Kane opened the drawer to his grandfather’s desk on Monday, 35 years later, he found a surprise gift. Long after the grandson’s thoughts of Army men and an eraser tank had fled his memory, there sat the same green eraser.

“It was my tank,” Kane said. “Every time he opened his desk there it was. Even though I forgot it, he never did.”