Overview
- Description
- Papers consisting of material relating to the experiences of the Katz family before, during, and after the Holocaust. Included in the papers are photographs of Yehudit Katz [donor] before World War II, photographs of Liola Katz [donor's mother] before the war, and photographs, documents, letters, and a notebook relating to Honan Katz [donor's uncle].
- Credit Line
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Dita Sperling
- Collection Creator
- Dita Sperling
- Biography
-
Yehudit (Dita) Katz Zupovitz (later Dita Sperling) was the daughter of Itzhak and Liola Katz. She was born in Kovno on April 15, 1922, where her father worked as an economist and her mother as a dentist. Dita had one younger brother, Zvi. She married Yehuda Zupovitz during her last year of high school, five months before the start of the war. In the ghetto she and Yehuda lived with her mother, grandfather, brother and aunt. Dita smuggled food while on work details outside of the ghetto in order to keep the family fed. She also smuggled her niece Rina Zupovitz out of the ghetto. Yehuda, deputy chief of the ghetto Jewish police, kept much of his underground activity a secret from Dita, but he did teach her how to shoot a rifle. Shortly after Yehuda's arrest in March 1944 and subsequent murder at Fort IX, Dita was sent to the Sanciai labor camp. From there, she was deported to Stutthof in July. Dita survived along with her mother and brother. Her father was killed in the June 1941 pogroms in Kovno; and her grandmother, Basia, was killed during the March 1944 action that targeted the children and the elderly. Her cousin (the baby) died on a death march to Stutthof.
Physical Details
- Genre/Form
- Photographs. Letters. Notebooks.
- Extent
-
1 folder
Rights & Restrictions
- Conditions on Access
- There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
- Conditions on Use
- Material(s) in this collection may be protected by copyright and/or related rights. You do not require further permission from the Museum to use this material. The user is solely responsible for making a determination as to if and how the material may be used.
Administrative Notes
- Holder of Originals
-
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- The papers were donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2006 by Dita Sperling.
- Record last modified:
- 2023-07-07 10:10:26
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn523596
Download & Licensing
- In Copyright - Use Permitted
- Terms of Use
- This record is not digitized and cannot be downloaded online.
In-Person Research
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-
Request in Shapell Center Reading Room
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Also in Dita Sperling collection
Contains photographs and other materials documenting the Holocaust experiences of the donor, her family, and her husband's family. Some of these materials may be combined into a single collection in the future.
Dita Sperling photographs
Document
Contains 15 photogaph prints of several scenes in the Kovno Ghetto (Kaunas, Lithuania), showing (donor) and her friends, including Yehuda Zupovitsh, her first husband. Yehuda Zupovitsh was a Jewish policeman in the Kovno ghetto and was executed in 1944 for collaborating with partisans. Includes images of ghetto inhabitants wearing Stars of David; Yehuda Zupovitsh wearing his ghetto police armband; and several photographs of ghetto inhabitants including Liuba Seltzer (niece of the donor), Herman Israel Sperling, Polia Zuckermann, Liolia Bermann, and M. Nivnivitzky. Some photographs were taken by George Kadish, a friend of the donor.
