Dr. Erazim Kohak (1933-2020)
Erazim Kohak was six years old when Nazis invaded Prague, seven when his father was imprisoned and eleven years old when both his parents were shipped to concentration camps. His mother and father survived, and the family eventually escaped to America.
He studied at Colgate University, earning a B.A. in 1954. Kohak then studied philosophy, theology, and religious studies at Yale University where he earned a masters’ degree in 1957 and a PhD in 1958.
Dr. Kohak worked at Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota and at Boston University, where he became a professor in 1977. After the fall of the communist regime, he returned to Czechoslovakia in 1989 to become a professor at Charles University in Prague. From 1990 to 1995 Dr. Kohak alternately taught at the Boston University and Prague’s Charles University.
In 2006, he became a senior research fellow in the Centre of Global Studies in the Institute of Philosophy at the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague.
Among the many honors Dr. Kohak received was Czechoslovakia’s highest civilian award, the Order of Tomas G. Masaryk, in 2013.
Erazim Kohak loved Sharon and protected 11.8 acres of his land by placing it in permanent conservation easement with the Society of Protection of New Hampshire Forests.
He and his family spent time in a cabin on Swamp Road that Erazim built himself and called “The Swamp,” named partly after the M*A*S*H tent of the same name and its location.