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OCTOBER 29, 2015 | The Jewish Home
B A LT I M O R E J E W I S H H O M E . C O M
THE BALTIMORE JEWISH HOME
JULY 15, 2021
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Seeing Hashem's Guiding Hand Dr. Moshe Katz Lived to Tell His Story BY TAMMY MARK
Dr. Katz with the brush that helped him survive
“I’m
not a Holocaust survivor per se, like everybody else. It’s one in a million how it happened.” To hear his inspiring stories of survival and success, it is evident that Dr. Moshe Katz lived through the war not only to tell the story to the world but to help secure a future for generations to come. Speaking with the soft-spoken nonagenarian, he shares his astonishing anecdotes in the most matter-of-fact way, attributing his survival largely to Providence. From the stories he relates, it is clear that the Katz family was no ordinary family, and the tenacious and brave Moshe Katz is particularly extraordinary. Dr. Katz lives in Lawrence, New York, in the center of the Five Towns-Far Rockaway region that he helped foster into the vibrant Jewish community it is today. He received his degree in Holocaust and Jewish studies and is an historian who can discuss every aspect of the ear The cover of Dr. Katz’s book. Moshe, Yankel, Surly, Josef, Louse, Sonny, Manca, Chana and Terry are depicted in the photo
and each country’s involvement in the war, his bookshelves filled with books on World War II. Dr. Katz has even studied books about Adolf Hitler himself, in an attempt to possibly comprehend the incomprehensible. Dr. Katz differentiates himself from those who survived the atrocities of the concentration camps and those who endured the devastation and hardships of life in war-torn Europe. Though he was spared from the camps, he had to hide his Jewish identity to survive. “I wasn’t hiding; I was working as a Christian working in different places, but I never had to hide,” he says. “I was working in different places – on a farm, in a supermarket, a garage – I got jobs all over. I had to run from one place to another, changing my name a few times, until finally I was liberated by the Russian army.”
History to Share Of the ten Katz siblings, nine survived the war. Moshe Katz chronicles his journey in his 2006 biography Nine out Ten, which he dedicated of Ten to his beloved parents, Chaya and Chaim, his adored older brother Pinchas, and his wife and daughters, his
aunts, uncles, hundreds of cousins and his revered rebbes and the six million souls who were murdered, as well as to the Righteous Gentiles who risked their own lives to save his. He estimates that over 200 members of his extended family perished in the camps. Written with the help of Nachman Seltzer, Dr. Katz’s book tells of life before, during and after the ghetto, and the numerous dangerous encounters and miraculous escapes he and his siblings experienced. As a young man before the war, Katz made a pact with his friends that if they lived to tell the story, they would. He was the sole survivor of his group, yet he couldn’t keep his word to tell his story for decades – sadly because nobody wanted to hear it. Dr. Katz explains that in the first years after the war, survivors were often dissuaded from sharing the atrocities, even among fellow Jews. It wasn’t until May 1960 that the horrific history became newsworthy. Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the “Final Solution” who had sent half a million Hungarian Jews to death in Auschwitz, was hunted down and captured in Argentina and brought to Israel to be tried for his crimes. Dr. Katz was determined to be there to watch it happen. The ever-resourceful survivor managed to procure a pass for the trial’s opening day. He praised G-d for the opportunity to see the vile Eichmann locked in a cage. When Dr. Katz returned home to the States, people were ready to listen. Finally finding an interested audience, Dr. Katz began chronicling his experiences by
