Vered: “People have to understand that it {the Holocaust} can happen again because it seeps in, it's not boom, boom, boom, it goes very, very, very, very slowly. And then you're wrong. You can't stop it. We have to talk about it. You can't hide it.” 

Narration:  

Welcome to In Their Words: Surviving the Holocaust. Finding Hope, a podcast preserving the testimonies of those who survived the atrocities committed by the Nazis and their racial collaborators in the 1930s and 1940s, and who shared their stories at United Nations Holocaust commemorative events around the world, reminding us of the human cost of hate, and our responsibility to fight injustice. Some survivors have agreed to join us for an in-depth conversation. This is the story of Vered Kater. 

Vered left her native Holland a few years after the end of the Second World War on a quest. After surviving the Holocaust as a young Jewish girl, she hung onto one haunting question: Why were the Jews so hated? 

She set off for Israel in hopes of an answer, eventually immigrating and finding a fulfilling career in nursing that enabled her to care for others. She attributes her mission to be of service to the world to the unconditional love she received from two people who risked their lives to save hers, hiding her from the Nazis when she was just months old. More than 75 years on and a trail of humanitarian projects pioneered around the globe, Vered speaks to us in good humour from her flat in Jerusalem, worlds apart from how her life began.   

VERED: (Adjusting microphone) I think this is better. 

NATALIE: That looks great, that’s perfect. 

VERED: Perfect? I don’t want to be perfect because nobody’s perfect. (Laughing) I have no idea what to start with. 

NATALIE: Don’t worry that’s what I’m here for. We’ll start from the beginning. If you could just state your full name, when you were born and when you got to Jerusalem. 

VERED: Oh all that in five minutes? (Laughing) no. You know, I took a bit longer, but never mind. Okay.  

VERED:  My name is Vered Kater. I was born in 1943, in the middle of the Second World War in Holland, in the south of Holland in the city called Eindhoven. Most people in that city worked for the factory of Philips. 

So did my father, which was lucky because Philips took care of the Jews that were working for him, and Holland was already occupied by the Germans. He had the special department where all his Jews were working. In the end of 1942 he heard that even those Jews that were protected in his factory were going to be round up and he made sure that all his Jews found a family where they could be hidden. This happened when I was six weeks old.  

One of the workers of Philips took me to his sister's house where he stayed during the week. They put me in a cupboard and hid me, but I had apparently a very good life there, not that I remember, but I started growing and making noises, and at the age of about two or three months, I couldn't stay any longer in the cupboard.  

So my war father, that's how I call him, my “papa”, was working during the week, five days a week he was in Eindhoven, and stayed with his sister. And during the weekend he traveled to his wife in Hoofddorfp, a Village next to Amsterdam. 

What he did when he was about two-and-a-half, three months old, he gave me a sleeping pill and wrapped me up and put me in a cardboard box and traveled with me and presented me to his wife, who didn't know about anything. This was a new baby. They had been trying to get pregnant. She had been trying to get pregnant, of course, not him, without success. And suddenly, you know, there was a little baby. You know, they saw it as a present of God 

NATALIE:  So they must mean a lot to you. 

VERED: Yes, they showed me what love can do. They showed me that to help others without financial reward or without saying, “I've done it I've done it I’ve done it”. You know, they just did it. They loved me. 

NATALIE: Without any expectations. 

VERED: Without any expectations at all. And there were wonderful people. I'm always saying, and it may sound weird, but the war time was the best time of my life. They spread the story around the village that I was the daughter of the unmarried sister of my war father. So the rumor was, “oh, that's a German baby. That's fine.” That meant I was free to grow up in that village and I had a wonderful life, and my war parents were beautiful people. Until today they are my “mama” and “papa.”  

NATALIE: Where were your biological parents and your brothers at this time?  

VERED: Everybody was in hiding in different places...  

NARRATION:  

While her biological family hid- her mother posing as a Christian maid, her father as a farmer and her brothers taken in by other families, Vered lived her first three years as the only child of her war parents, Joke and Joop, blissfully unaware of the terror that surrounded her. In 1945 she returned to the parents she was born to, now divorced, and siblings she hadn’t grown up with. Her family survived the Holocaust, and now they faced the aftermath. 

NATALIE: What was it like living in Europe after the war ended?  

VERED: My brothers and I, we were OK together, but we fought a lot. I mean, we didn't know each other. I was okay in school, not brilliant, I managed. I made friends, but not very much, not tight friends. I didn't trust that they would stay. I was torn away from the loving family, and it wasn’t a really happy time.  

NATALIE: You were born into the war and just an infant at its conclusion, at what point did you understand that the Jews were being persecuted? 

VERED: I know that I was called the Jew kid and I lived in the Catholic south of Holland, which did not really appreciate the Jews, I think. And I started reading and I read about the Holocaust. I couldn't believe my eyes, in the Catholic South they were cursing us Jews,  and reading about it made me realize there's something wrong with this. I have to figure out what is wrong with the Jews. I have to find out what does it mean to to be a Jew. So I went. I took a plane and I went.   

Narration: She headed to Israel. After completing basic nursing training in Holland, Vered set off, working in her profession in a kibbutz for two years before deciding to immigrate. Over the years she studied her way through her Master’s degree, spending the better part of her life fulfilling her calling to care for others through nursing. She says assisting with health needs in underdeveloped countries has been “like oxygen,” and a way to honor Joke and Joop.  

VERED: I wanted to give something back to the world. And I think the Jewish saying “he who saves one life saves a whole world,” well I wanted to do that a little bit. Since about 30 or 40 years I’ve been traveling to third world countries and helping people to help themselves, giving them the ability to take better care of themselves and of their children. You know, when you are at a festivity and a child in front of you chokes and you save him, those things touch me. It’s the little things that are so beautiful, not the big heroics. And then the smiles of the people you get and they show me, “that’s the child that you did that with, and look it's a little girl now!” It’s beautiful. 

NATALIE: You saw the fruits of your labor 

VERED: It's beautiful, it's fantastic! 

NATALIE: You clearly made a difference. 

VERED: Yes, like Joke and Joop made a difference by taking me in.  

NATALIE: You’ve said you needed to find a way to justify your existence, being that your life was spared. Do you feel that you’ve found that answer? 

VERED: Not totally, I never understand why I’m still alive and many other people aren’t, but I try to do something with it, to be useful to the world. 

NATALIE: What do you feel about the injustices that you went through during the Holocaust, and how has this shaped your view of justice? 

VERED:I feel that the Germans cheated me of a childhood as a young child, I didn't have a lot of fun. I did not know what a family is. And that's the Holocaust. And that’s the Holocaust. That's the occupation. That's the killing of people without them doing anything bad. And and we have to prevent the next Holocaust by listening to each other, but accepting somebody that believes something else. Whatever country, they are different, but they are people that hurt, people that need love, people that need care, and they believe in another God, okay. And I think that one lesson from the Holocaust, we should remember, people are different. But if we listen to each other, we are the same. We really have the same things. And we need love. We need care. And I think if we can just share that with others to accept people as they are. 

NATALIE:Why do you think that’s missing, why do people have such a hard time with that? 

VERED:I think many people are self-centered. The new God is money and comfort, I think, and I don't think people really believe that one can be so bad as to kill for a religion. It's impossible to believe that what happened in the Holocaust, that it happened. I still haven't discovered why everybody hates us, by the way. I will never discover that I think.  

NATALIE: Why is it important the younger generation learn about the Holocaust? 

VERED:So it won't happen again. If you don't know that it can happen, this bad stuff, we have to talk about it. People have to understand that it can happen again because it seeps in. It's not “boom, boom, boom,” it goes very, very, very, very slowly. And then you’re wrong. You can't stop it. We have to talk about it. We can't hide it. And also know, we are dying out, whatever way you see it, I'm one of the babies, and when the babies go. There's nobody left to talk about. That's why I agreed to this thing. 

NATALIE:I wanted to ask you about your participation in the commemorative event with the United Nations three years ago. 

VERED: Oh in Yangon! You know what happened, I was there for a project and it was Holocaust Memorial Day, and I said “well do you have any survivors?” And they said “no, we’ve never met one.” I said, “well I’m one!” And I talked, that was it. 

NATALIE: How did it feel being able to speak about your experience? 

VERED: I felt proud as being an Israeli, a Holocaust survivor, sharing it with people. I felt really honored to be there. Just think about it. So I just just felt proud to be able to do it. 

NATALIE: So this wasn’t the moment that you compared your life to that of a cat? What were you thinking when you made this connection, how did you make this connection? Could you explain that a bit for people listening? 

VERED: I was supposed to write something for Yangon, and I thought, “well, my family name is Kater, it means “cat” and is a very well known Jewish name, Katz.  It comes from Cohen, which is the priest tribe, in the Jewish belief. So I thought, “well, my life is like that of a cat,”because every time, you know, when you throw a cat away, they say cats have seven lives. Well, mine has had a lot of lives, but my miracle was I was born in a war. Then I went into hiding.  

NATALIE: And that is life number two.  

VERED: Life number two was in the cupboard, life number three was in a cardboard box going to my war mother and staying there for three fantastic years. My fourth life was at the end of the Second World War and discovering that I had two brothers and parents, total strangers. My next life was deciding to become a nurse to try and give back to the world what I was given. My sixth life was going to Israel, and my seventh life is meeting someone by pure fluke on a Hanukkah party, that was asked to go to Uganda and that was before Israel had diplomatic relations with Uganda. And she was scared to go. I said, “well, I'll go with you. You'll figure it out.” And that's how I started my international nursing career, helping people. And, you know, that's my seventh life and that's what I did most of my life. So that's my cat's life.  

Narration: Up until the COVID-19 pandemic brought the world to a halt, Vered has continued traveling for international health promotion projects. Though she's itching to go back, she says moving into a communal setting just before the virus was widespread has been something of divine timing, and her new living quarters have permitted her to continue to be of service to others from the safety of home.  

NATALIE: If it wasn't for the pandemic, you would be on a plane right now? 

VERED: Oh, yeah, definitely.  

NATALIE: How has this year been for you then, what have you done with your time? 

VERED: Well, I was lucky, about four  months before the Corona, I moved into an elderly community that gave me still time to make some acquaintances here. I never married because I’ve never trusted anyone well enough with my life. After what I’ve been through and what I've seen and lived through I couldn’t, I still can't form a bond for life, but I've not been alone, and that's fantastic. Somebody up there organized that there was a space for me here and I'm very happy. I've got a small house on the compound, and it's really nice.  

I'm very handy. I fix things. I still help people doing things. I'm very good with plants. I do a lot of balconies here to help people, so I go with them to the nursery. They buy plans and I tell them what to do with them, to keep them alive. I'm good with animals, but plants and animals are very grateful. You know, if you wish them well, they don't demand more than a little bit of love and they give back a lot. They’re never nasty to you. I have one family in Israel that's really my family. Even their kids call me grandma more or less, which is wonderful. That's just what I needed, and, and  I’m meant to be saved otherwise I couldn't have done everything I did.  

NATALIE: You were meant to be saved.  

VERED: Yeah, yeah. There must be some higher power that took care of this. I'm you know, I'm not religious, but, you know, because I know that I've helped a lot of people all over the world to help themselves. And I think that's what Joke and Joop would have wanted. I’m sure.  

NATALIE:  Well Vered I thank you for your time, it was a sincere pleasure. Take care, it's a pleasure. 

VERED: Thank you very much.  Be well Natalie, Thank you. Take care. It's a pleasure. Thank you. Shalom.  

NATALIE: Shalom. 

Narration: That was Vered Kater, who managed to escape a deadly fate by the Nazis during the Holocaust, thanks to the people who sheltered her. You've been listening to In Their Words: Surviving the Holocaust. Finding Hope, a podcast by the United Nations Holocaust Outreach Programme. To find out more about the organization's Holocaust remembrance and educational programme and how you can participate, visit www.un.org/en/holocaustrememberance. I'm Natalie Hutchison. Thanks for listening.