Katerina (Katie) Engel Altenberg passed away peacefully on March 15, 2022 at age 85 after a short battle with leukemia. She is survived by her children Karen Libman and Steven Altenberg, her son-in-law Bob Libman, and her three grandchildren, Henry, Gracie, and Emily Libman.
Katie was born on October 13, 1936 in Vienna, Austria to Ludvig and Greta Engel. She had a younger brother, Adolph. She spent her early years on on estate called Edmunshof in the state of Burgenland near the Hungarian border, where her father, an agronomist, had built a general farm. Katie’s family survived expulsion from their home, arrests, separations from one another, ghettos, and detention and concentration camps during the Holocaust. In 1948, at age 12, Katie and her family immigrated to the United States and settled in New Berlin, New York, where her father purchased a chicken farm.
Katie had a curious mind and sharp intellect. She was valedictorian of her high school graduating class and attended Syracuse University, where she graduated with a degree in Zoology and a teaching certificate. After moving to New York City, she worked as a research assistant in the laboratory of Dr. E. Donnall Thomas, who would go on to win a Nobel prize after completing the first ever bone marrow transplant.
In 1960, while in California, Katie met Henry Altenberg, also a child survivor of the Holocaust, whose parents had sent him and his sister to England from Berlin, Germany before World War II began. Henry, an Air Force captain, and Katie were married shortly before Henry was assigned to an American military base in Japan, where their two children, Karen and Steven, were born.
In 1967, after suffering a heart attack, Henry was honorably discharged from the military and Katie’s family settled in Silver Spring, Maryland. Katie started her own custom floral design business and Henry worked as a management analyst for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. After Henry passed away in 1983 from heart failure, Katie found community in a child survivors of the Holocaust group and volunteered at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
In 2013, Katie relocated to Evanston, Illinois, to be closer to her daughter, son-in-law, and three grandchildren who live in Highland Park. She made close friendships in her residence at the Mather, became an avid painter, poet, and swimmer, and enjoyed traveling around the world. She continued her support for Jewish organizations, including the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center, the American Society for Technion - Illinois Institute of Technology, and Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America.
Katie’s daughter Karen is a clinical social worker with her own practice in Ravinia, Illinois and is married to Bob Libman, an attorney. Karen and Bob have three children: Henry (named after Katie’s husband), a software engineer in Chicago, Gracie, a senior at UCLA studying biomedical engineering, and Emily, a freshman at the University of Michigan. Her son Steven, who lives in Amsterdam in the Netherlands, is a jazz drummer and professor of jazz music at the Prince Claus Conservatoire.
Katie’s oral history of her family’s pre-World War II life and survival of the Holocaust can be found at the websites below:
Oral History for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (audio): https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn598359
Oral History for the USC Shoah Foundation (video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDD_bc4HVC0
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