By Jason Cohen
Last week, the University in conjunction with Hillel, remembered those lost during the Holocaust and heard a first-hand account from a survivor.
Ethel Katz, from East Poland, was the only survivor in her family after the Nazis invaded her hometown in the 1940s.
In the beginning of the Holocaust, the strategy of Katz’s family was to hide and move from place to place, she said. They escaped from the ghetto in their town and stayed in a barn for a few weeks before they were kicked out. The family then moved to a shack and stayed in an abandoned straw house until the owners of the house returned and kicked the family out.
After this, there was nowhere to go so they decided to hide in the fields, Katz said. When they returned to their farm they found everything but their home destroyed.
Katz said she wanted to dispel the myth that the Holocaust only occurred in the concentration camps.
“Jews died outside camps and suffered,” she said.
For Katz, the Holocaust started on July 5, 1941, when Hitler invaded East Poland; she was only 17 at the time. At the outskirts of her town, there was a river where Hitler and the Nazis surrounded many Jews in her community and killed them, Katz said.
When the Nazis arrived in her town they took away every right the Jews had. She, along with all of the other Jews, had to wear a Jewish star as a form of identification and were not allowed to attend temple or go to school.
Katz said all of the Jews were assigned work; she worked on the farm with her sister. All men ages 18 to 50 had to register in order to do work. Her brother registered and was never seen again. Her brother, along with the other men that registered, were imprisoned until 3 a.m. and then killed with machine guns, she said.
The Germans were very organized when they murdered people, Katz said. When they killed people, it was called “actia,” meaning action. Luckily, she said, Jews could buy freedom from the Nazis. When two of her brothers were taken, the family was able to buy their freedom.
At one point the Nazis were so cruel that, Katz said, they took many men from the street, and instead of killing them, gave them water containing typhus, she said. When they went home they all died. In February 1944, Katz said she and her friends heard planes overhead. Believing they were being rescued they sang “Tomorrow, Tomorrow.” For them tomorrow never came, she said.
In March 1944, they were surrounded and captured. Katz said she tried to hide, but was hit on the head. The next thing she saw was a Nazi standing over her.
When Katz was knocked unconscious she was separated from her brothers, and everyone in her family was killed. Three men found Katz and hid her for two weeks. Two weeks, later the Soviets liberated them, she said. With one of the Christian men Katz stayed with, she found her parents and buried them.
Hitler and the Nazis returned to the city, forcing Katz to live in her family’s other house in the city. She said she lived in a false wall in her attic. Katz allocated bread for each day.
“Thirst was a 1,000 times worse than hunger,” she said.
In July 1944 the town was evacuated. Katz said she was so sick that it took her a whole year until she could stand again. She stayed with another survivor for a year and then moved from Poland to Slovakia. In January 1947 she immigrated to the United States, where she got married.
Through all of her turmoil her religious beliefs were not affected.
“God didn’t do it, man did it,” she said.

Hillel commemorates victims of the Holocaust in a reading of names of the deceased. (Elizabeth Pierdominici/The Chronicle)