Joseph Kagan, Baron Kagan

He was born Juozapas Kaganas into a Litvak family in the Republic of Lithuania. His parents Benjamin and Miriam Kagan had built up a successful textile business in Kaunas.[1] He first came to England in 1933 to study at the University of Leeds but returned to Lithuania where he was trapped on the outbreak of the Second World War in Kaunas. His father was away when the Soviets invaded in 1940, and escaped bound for Britain, (Benjamin, his father, was the second oldest man in Britain when he died at the age of 109.) Unusually, Kagan was allowed to retain the family's woollen factory leading to (unproven) suspicions he was an agent of the Russian security services.[1]

The Nazis invaded Lithuania during summer 1941 and Kagan was interned by them. He married Margarita Shtromaite (later Lady Kagan) in the Kaunas Ghetto. The newlyweds and Kagan's mother, Mira managed to survive over three years in this ghetto. First, they were ordinary inmates, but when Kagan realised there was no chance of their surviving unless they escaped, he organised a hiding place for himself, his new wife and his mother in a factory just outside the ghetto walls. The three lived in a small box in the factory attic for nine months, kept alive by the efforts of a Lithuanian non-Jew, Vytautas Rinkevicius, who risked his and his family's life to save them.[1]

When the Nazis were ousted from Lithuania, Joseph and Margaret Kagan made their way to Bucharest and from there, to Britain. From 1946 he settled in Huddersfield and began work as a blanket weaver. He founded Kagan Textiles Ltd. at a small factory opposite Elland Town Hall.

In 1951, Kagan invented Gannex leading to his firm' expansion and its move to a larger mill in Dewsbury Road. After the then opposition trade spokesman, Harold Wilson, wore a Gannex coat on a world tour in 1956, the raincoats became fashion icons, and were worn by world leaders such as Lyndon Johnson, Mao Zedong and Nikita Khrushchev, as well as by Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh. In addition they were worn by Arctic and Antarctic explorers, Himalayan climbers, the armed services and police forces in Britain and Canada. The success of the new fabric made Kagan a multi-millionaire and a series of mergers, takeovers and outright purchases put Kagan Textiles in control of one of the most efficient combines in the textile and clothing industries. In 1967, he bought Barkisland Hall, Barkisland as accommodation for visitors to his company.

Huddersfield was the home town of Harold Wilson, Leader of the Opposition in 1963, and Prime Minister from 1964 to 1970 and from 1974 to 1976. Kagan became close to Wilson and provided funding for his private office.[1] In Wilson's first resignation honours list in 1970, Kagan was given a knighthood.[2] In 1971, a defecting KGB agent, Oleg Lyalin, relayed accounts of Kagan boasting of his connection to Wilson, leading to MI5 placing him under surveillance, but finding no evidence of spying.[3]

His son Daniel Kagan is a Democratic Member of the Colorado House of Representatives.[6]

• John A. Hargreaves. "Kagan, Joseph, Baron Kagan (1915–1995)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)