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Rosa Katz, 1967

Rosa Goldberg Katz and her daughter, Marilyn, lighting Hanukkah candles in their home. View the original source document: WHI 56775

Rosa Katz was a survivor of the Nazi Holocaust who settled in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, after World War II.

Rachel (Rosa) Goldberg Katz was born in Lodz, Poland, on May 6, 1924, to a well-to-do family with liberal Jewish beliefs. In 1935, her sister and brother-in-law immigrated to Palestine while the rest of the family remained in Poland. When the Germans occupied Lodz in 1939, 15-year-old Rosa was among the thousands of Jews crowded into the city's ghetto.

Three years later, in July 1942, her mother was deported from the ghetto and never heard from again. In August 1944, the Lodz Ghetto was liquidated. Its starving residents, including Rosa, her father, brother, and sister-in-law, Hela, were all shipped to Auschwitz. There she was separated from her father and brother. She never saw them again.

German officials mistakenly sent Rosa and hundreds of other Jewish women (instead of French prisoners) to work at the Krupp munitions factory in Berlin. For eight months, Rosa assembled delicate timepieces for German bombs. In March 1945, she was transferred to the death camp in Ravensbruck, Germany.

The Swedish Red Cross liberated the camp within a month of her arrival. Its inhabitants were transported to Sweden where Rosa recuperated for several years. She married Bernard Katz there (also a survivor). In April 1948, they came to the U.S.

Initially settling in North Carolina, the Katz family moved to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, in 1953. They raised four children while Rosa earned a degree in nursing. She worked as a nurse at Mercy Medical Center in Oshkosh until her retirement in 1994. Rosa passed away in 2013.

Rosa Katz, Oral History Interview

Rosa's Testimony

Listen to Rosa Katz tell her story to the Wisconsin Historical Society interviewer.

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Oral Histories: Wisconsin Survivors of the Holocaust

Hear the stories of 22 Holocaust Survivors and two American witnesses interviewed between 1974 and 1981.