U.S. Air Force pHotoby Senior AirmanTim Chacon Col. Terry Ross, 11th Wing vice commander, presents Holocaust survivor and guest speaker Irene Katz with a gift from the 11th Wing at the Holocaust Days of Remembrance Luncheon May 6.

‘‘We are tremendously privileged to have Mrs. Katz with us today. Not only to remind us not to take for granted liberties that many serve and die for, but also (to remember) our personal responsibility to uphold our end of the bargain; the rights of all people and the human dignity that should be afforded to everyone. You couldn’t find enough money to pay for the opportunity to listen. Take advantage,” urged the vice commander in his introduction.

Katz was an only child born in Dornheim, Germany in 1924. Her deeply religious parents sent her to an orthodox Jewish school when she was 6 years old and then onto a farming school at 16. The plan was for Katz to immigrate to Palestine, since the climate for her people had become so dangerous in Nazi Germany. Instead, in 1940, the school was closed and Katz returned home. In 1941, in her hometown of Dornheim, Katz and her mother were arrested by the Germans and sent to the concentration camp near Riga, Latvia. The German soldiers called it ‘‘relocation.” Katz was in reality, taken prisoner.

‘‘Early in the morning we heard a lot of noise...footsteps, glass breaking, furniture moving,” Katz began, remembering the November day when her life was about to change forever. ‘‘They came up to our living quarter. We were told to just be quiet and (not to defend ourselves). Whatever they did to us, there was no way that we could resist.”

The soldiers destroyed the town’s synagogue and burned the prayer books, Katz explained. They lied and told them they could take all their belongings with them and said that there would be work for those who could sew or clean. ‘‘We didn’t have any bad things in our mind. To this day, I don’t know why we believed what they said,” she said.

After three days, Katz and her mother along with the entire Jewish community were loaded into cattle trains. ‘‘They put us in like sardines,” Katz said with disgust. ‘‘We didn’t even have standing room. It was locked from the outside, guarded by the SS. We must have been (in) there three days before we came to Riga.”

Katz and the others were told by the soldiers they were at a wealthy farm. ‘‘But when we came there, (we saw) barracks,” she recalled. When the train stopped, they were unloaded from cars. Katz remembers nothing but chaos, noise and fear. ‘‘Nothing was ever fast enough. They were always yelling ‘Faster! Faster!’ There was snow and ice. We were not dressed for this kind of weather.”

With the icy Latvian conditions, Katz remembers some of the older people slipping and falling. The Nazi soldiers would not let anyone help them up off the ground. ‘‘They would say, ‘Move on! Move on! We will help them.’ Yeah, they took care of them,” Katz recalled horrifically. ‘‘They shot them right on the spot.”

Katz spent four years in camps in Latvia, including Kaiserwald, the largest Latvian camp. After her mother was killed in the camp in January of 1942, Katz was eventually liberated by the encroaching Russian army after being marched into Poland. She met her future husband, Josef Katz, while in the camp, and the two were married in 1946. Soon after, with the war at an end, they came to the U.S. and started their family and a successful business.

‘‘It was a terrible time for us,” said Katz. ‘‘I cannot forget it and I never will forget it.” Katz is a supporter of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and is a member of the Speakers Bureau.

The luncheon was made possible by the Bolling Chapel staff, Protocol Office, First Sergeants and First Sergeants Council.