Eugene Katz

Eugene Katz was born in Dzisna, Poland in 1925. He was one of five children, growing up in a Jewish family not too far from Vilna. He attended both secular and religious schools.

When war broke out in 1939, the part of the country they lived in was assigned to the USSR, and they lived poorly under Soviet communism. However, in 1941, the Germans’ Operation Barbarossa brought a German offensive to Dzisna. Shortly after the Germans’ occupation, life became increasingly difficult as the young Eugene and his family struggled to survive. When the SS arrived, they liquidated the ghetto, massacring almost all of Dzisna’s 5000 Jews, including Eugene’s father and sister Sophie.

Aided by fog, Eugene and his brother, Moishe, escaped in the swamps and joined the partisans. Seeking escape at their pre-war Polish friends’ — the Zurawskis’ — home, they failed to realize that they were being set up by them. Heeding the Zurawskis’ tip, the Chief of Police arrived to find Eugene and Moishe tied together, and he killed Moishe easily. Vowing revenge, Eugene escaped once again, working for different partisan groups before joining the Russian army. During the war, Eugene returned to kill the Zurawskis, and, after the war, found out that a threatening telegram he’d sent to his brother’s murderer spurred the Chief to commit suicide.
After fighting, being frequently wounded, and ultimately surviving, Eugene married Mara in 1949, lived in Riga, Latvia until 1957, and then returned to Poland until 1960. Eugene finally immigrated to Canada where he established a furniture manufacturing company, which employed hundreds of employees.

Eugene Katz died in 2018 and his full testimony is part of the Canadian Collection of Holocaust survivor testimonies. It is preserved in the USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive and accessible through the Ekstein Library.

Eugene Katz

That was the most important thing, to survive.