Tree 20

 

Tree 20

Zwi Katz

Zwi Katz was born on the 10th of July, 1927 in Lithuanian Kaunas and grew up in a bourgeois Jewish family. After the invasion of the Wehrmacht in Lithuania he was imprisoned in the summer of 1941 in the ghetto of Kaunas, deported in 1944 to the concentration camp Kaufering and later to the Dachau concentration camp. At the end of April 1945, he was taken on the so-called death march of Dachau by the SS towards the Alps and was freed in Waakirchen, Upper Bavaria, by the US Army. After his liberation, he embarked on a multi-year odyssey across Europe. Over the Krimml Tauern Pass from Salzburg to Italy and across the Mediterranean, reaching Israel in 1948 where he founded a family and worked in the Ministry of Agriculture. In the eighties Zwi Katz began to deal intensively with his past. As a consequence, he speaks as a witness at schools in Germany and Israel, is a regular participant in commemorative events and for many years he was deputy chairman of the Association of survivors of the Dachau Landsberg / Kaufering concentration camps. In 2002, Zwi Katz published his autobiographical book "From the shores of Memel into the unknown: A youth in the shadow of the Holocaust".