Kahan was born into an Hasidic Jewish family in Sighet, Romania. After getting reports from his father in Sighet that Jews in the city were gathered into ghettos, he returned home to provide food. In 1944, Kahan was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp with his father, mother, and a sister.
After arriving in the camp, his mother and sister were taken to the gas chambers, where they died.
Kahan and his father were selected as workers. After a couple of weeks, they were transported to the Wolfsberg camp near Breslau, and later to the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp and Ebensee concentration camp. Kahan experienced torture in all three camps.
His father was also tortured.
At the end of his time at Ebensee, Kahan lost consciousness and was thrown into a pile of corpses. American forces liberated the camp the same day, and while transporting the corpses to a mass grave, one of the American soldiers saw Kahan"s hand move and pulled him out of the pile.
Kahan"s father died 10 days after liberation. After the war Kahan moved to Paris and planned to go to the United States.
He supported himself by selling knitwear he produced with knitting machines.
He decided to stay and was granted permission to settle as part of the Jewish refugee quota established to replace the number of Norwegian Jews who died in the Holocaust. In Norway, he established the textile factory Stabekk trikotasje (now Heka trikotasje), and the business was expanded into other areas. His autobiography, Ilden og Lyset (English: The Fire and the Light), with a foreword by Elie Wiesel, was published in 1988 and published in English in 2006.
Kahan married a Jewish woman he met in Norway.
He was active in the Jewish community in Oslo, serving as leader of the Mosaic congregation (Det Mosaiske Trossamfund) for a time, was an active supporter of the Jewish Museum in Oslo, and was a board member of the Friends association of Norwegian Center for Studies of Holocaust and Religious Minorities.
