by Mary Anne Campbell

“It will pass,” said people at the beginning, before the harassment swelled. “It will pass.” In fact, Kitty Friedenbach Saks recalls her own grandfather saying, “Es wird vorbeigehen,” in 1938 as Austria’s Jewish citizens were being struck by the first waves of persecution. We know now, of course, that Nazi aggression didn’t just pass away, for all of us have seen the photos of mothers and babies being herded onto military trucks, have surveyed the pictures of shrunken faces behind barbed wire, and the images of emaciated bodies stacked in mass graves.

As a toddler, Kitty walked in Vienna’s parks daily with her grandparents; she and her parents shared an apartment with them overlooking the Danube before a German military officer forced the family out so he could take personal possession of it.

After multiple attempts at crossing the border, her parents were eventually able to escape with her to Belgium. To keep Kitty safe and in school after the Nazis invaded Belgium, her parents entrusted her care to a few Catholic nuns — but within the many convents and orphanages she had to adopt a different religion, assume a different name, speak a different language, and pretend to be an orphan. She was reunited with her parents when British troops entered Brussels in 1944, and the little family immigrated to Virginia in 1948.

We know Kitty's story and what happened to her because we have personal photos and memories of Kitty and others who suffered under the Nazi regime. Kitty went on to share her story and others to students and community groups across the United States for decades. She brought the Holocaust to life and reminds us to this day of what can happen when authoritarian governments come into power.  

Her story should not be erased, as it was in March 2025, from the Department of Defense’s website. Find out more about Kitty Friedenbach Saks here, and keep the story going.