March 6, 2014

Contact Rick Kyte at
608-796-3704 or rlkyte@viterbo.edu

CHILD SURVIVOR OF THE HOLOCAUST CIPORA KATZ TO SPEAK
AT VITERBO UNIVERSITY MARCH 20

LA
CROSSE, Wis. – Cipora Katz, a child survivor of the Holocaust, will share her story
at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 20 in the Viterbo University Fine Arts Center Main
Theatre.

Katz was born in Siemiatycze, Poland,
in 1938. She was four years old in November 1942 when Nazi SS began to encircle
the Warsaw Ghetto to start the infamous deportation. There was little time to
escape, and her mother wrapped her in a blanket and handed her to her father. Her
mother would stay behind to wait for another daughter who was visiting
relatives. Katz would never see her mother and sister again.

Fleeing the city with her father and
her uncle’s family, Katz and her relatives hid in the forest. They would
eventually make their way to the farm of a veterinarian her uncle knew. The man
hid Katz and her family, eight people in all, in a small underground silo used
to store potatoes. Her father would die, but the rest of them would survive
there for 22 months and three days, mostly on potatoes. Katz slept next to her
dead father for seven days before he could be buried deep in the forest. After
the war, Katz would eventually settle in the U.S. in 1955. She donated her
blanket to Holocaust Memorial Foundation of Illinois.

Katz serves on the Speakers Bureau
of the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center. She has dedicated her
life to educating young and old alike about standing up against bigotry,
intolerance, and hatred.

This presentation is part of the D.B. Reinhart Institute for Ethics in
Leadership Spring Lecture Series and is free and open to the public. It is
being held in conjunction with Viterbo’s annual Teaching the Holocaust Workshop
for educators.

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