Hermine Markowitz papers

Hermina Zali Katz (now Markowitz) was born on Mar. 15, 1926 in Volovice, Czechoslovakia. When the Nazis took over the Sudetenland, Hermine was visiting her aunt and uncle in Antwerp, where she remained until she fled to France following the German invasion of Belgium. She was separated from her family and taken by another family to Marseilles and placed in hiding in a convent with the help of the OSE. On Aug. 27, 1942, the Gestapo arrested her and took her to Aix-en-Provence. During her medical exam, she was diagnosed with appendicitis and taken to a Catholic hospital, where she escaped and returned to the convent. She stayed at the convent until liberation, when she became an OSE counselor for war orphans. Her parents and seven siblings were deported to Auschwitz in Apr. 1944, and only one sister, Dora, survived.