Eva Katz and her son Hershel 1946 in a Displaced Persons Camp, Germany. Photo Katz Family collection
Today on International Women’s Day, along with the bravery of the Ukrainian women, I would be remiss if I didn’t also honor my mother-in-law Eva Katz.
When I look in the faces of the young Ukrainian women walking through the frozen nights juggling babies in their arms, leaving a war-ravaged land that had once been their home, I see her Eastern European face in theirs.
Braving the incertitude among history’s most jumbled mass of migration after WWII was a courageous young Polish Jewish woman grown older than her 23 years through the unspeakable horrors that no one should ever bear witness to.
Her entire family lost at the hands of the Nazis, separated from her husband, she trudged on with her meager belongings tightly clutching her most valued possession, her precious newborn baby.
This tiny baby boy, born without a home, who would never know what it was to grow up with grandparents, uncles or aunts would one day grow up to be my future husband Hersh Unable to return to her now-vanished hometown in Poland now rampant with antisemitism, reunited with her husband, they found their way to a Displaced Persons camp in Germany.
Today as I do every day I celebrate the female spirit.