According to a copy birth certificate, dated 18 November 1938, Ernst Kamm was born 5 January 1899 the son of the Jewish businessman, Siegfried Kamm and Sophie Kamm, née Staub, in Bytom (formerly Beuthen) Silesia, Poland. He married the aunt of the donor when they were both in their sixties. Ernst’s first wife, about whom nothing is known, had died of cancer. He fought for the German army during the First World War and was subsequently awarded the Ehrenkreuz for those who took part in it. He registered for the Landwehr (Home Guard) during the 1930s.

According to a Buchenwald concentration camp release certificate, dated 1 December 1938, it appears that Ernst was rounded up during the night of the November Pogrom, incarcerated at Buchenwald and then given the option to emigrate. Stamps in his Jewish passport and additional documentation indicate that he went to Shanghai, arriving on 24 July 1939 and leaving sometime in 1947. He is variously described as a merchant and hunter. In fact many of the photographs in this collection depict him as a hunter. Apart from completing a course in dairy farming in California in 1950 it is not known what happened to him thereafter.