Unusually, Kagan was allowed to retain the family's woollen factory leading to (unproven) suspicions he was an agent of the Soviet security services.
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.
In addition they were worn by Arctic and Antarctic explorers, Himalayan climbers, the armed services and police forces in Britain and Canada.
[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.
It was also revealed around this time that Kagan had been friendly with Richardas Vaygauskas, a former official at the Russian embassy, who was known to be a KGB agent.
However, Tam Dalyell in his 1995 obituary of Kagan, believed that he had maintained such contacts to assist relatives in Vilnius; Vaygauskas was also from Lithuania.