Boston North Inc.
This site is graciously hosted by our friends and supporters at Techevolution.
Copyright © 2007 -
The Holocaust Center
Boston North Inc.
Webmaster: www.thesumneradvantage.com
(781) 595-
Erica Deutch Katz*
I was born on September 5, 1925 in Mad, Hungary to Julianna and Ferenc Deutch. I lived in Miskolc, Hungary with my family and remember that antisemistism was rampant.
In the spring of 1944, I was preparing to move to Israel when the Germans marched into Hungary and forced us into the ghetto. My father, a wine merchant, was given no choice but to join the Hungarian army, then taken to a work camp, and finally taken to Mauthausen where he died three weeks after liberation. One of his brothers, Robert, was sent to Buchenwald. The rest of my family was deported to Auschwitz in May.
When I realized the true horror of the mass exterminations at Auschwitz, I became determined to escape. My sister and two others and I managed to sneak into a transport and ended up in Ravensburck, a camp for homosexuals, political prisoners and criminals.
From there we were sent to work at an airplane factory in Berlin where we labored daily from 2 p.m. to 2 a.m. with only three hours of sleep. Despite extreme physical and emotional deprivation, and constant terror, we managed to survive until the war ended. I lost most of my family including my parents and brothers, Tibur and Emanuel. Only my brother, Robert, who later died in Israel’s War of Independence, and my sister, Vera, who lives in Australia, survived. My husband and I have two children and one grandson.
*Deceased 2006