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In spite of the nasty and painful experiences, which he endured in Nentershausen during the “Nazi Era”, Willy Katz never forgot his hometown and place of birth. This was shown in a report from Professor Wilhelm Schwarz, born in Iba, who later lived in Canada and visited Willy Katz in Israel in 1979. He stated in his article; “there were hanging on the wall in his apartment in Petach Tikvah a photograph from Nentershausen, where he was born in 1898 and where his family had lived for over 200 years as leather tanners and shoemakers. Another picture showed his mother as a beautiful young woman. She was born in Baumbach and is buried in Nentershausen. A third picture showed Willy Katz as a very young recruit in the uniform of the Emperor, shortly before the end of the First World War. In his pocket he carried, next to his Israeli passport, a German identification card. What does he think about, and occupy his thoughts during the day when he sits and rests? When I called him on the telephone after my arrival, he already started asking me what was new in Nentershausen and in Iba, where I had been visiting shortly before. We sat in his apartment and conversed about mutual acquaintances – alive and dead. Willy Katz still remembers all of them, the people from Nentershausen, Bauhaus, Sűss, Iba, Solz, Dens, Mőnchhosbach and Rockensűss. All over, he used to sell his shoes, first by foot, later on a bicycle and even later, after the First World War, by a horse-driven wagon. He still can remember all of them. He remembers when the sister of my grandmother married, he knows that an aunt of mine,
Mrs. Gebhardt, lived in the Elzebach in Nentershausen, the same street on which he lived up to 1940. I mentioned to him that even today, 25 years after I left my hometown, I am still homesick. I have the same problem, said Willy Katz. I just cannot tell anybody about it, because otherwise my grandchildren laugh at me. Homesickness for Germany, for Nentershausen – What, have you lost it? With 42 years, Willy Katz had to learn Spanish, with 75 years he came to Israel. Hebrew he does not know. He puts on the television program, however, he mutes the sound, he cannot understand it anyway. For a while we spoke in the Hessen dialect (Mundart), which he had not forgotten. ‘Er schwatzt wahrhaftig noch wie wir’ (he really still talks just like us) supposedly yelled a lady farmer from Iba when she saw Willy Katz again, after 40 years. ‘One should not move an old tree’, he said while showing that he was somewhat tired. After that he wrote on a piece of paper 10 to 12 names, people from Nentershausen and Iba, to whom he wanted me to give his personal regards. He said ‘good people, good people’ and his wife, Martha, agreed with him. From the bus, to where he accompanied me, I saw him once more walking across the street, tall, opulent, full of life, waving a friendly good-bye. A Nentershausener in Israel”.