Katzover said she was born near Satmar in Transylvania to a Hasidic but Zionist family. Her mother survived the death camps, and her father was drafted into forced labor in the Hungarian army and managed to escape. “Our home was a Zionist home. After the Holocaust they constantly wanted to immigrate to the Land of Israel,” she said. After the family moved to Israel, they were first sent to Dimona and later settled in Bnei Brak, where she grew up and was educated.
She also described arriving in Kiryat Arba after the Six-Day War. Her husband decided to move there after a tour with his brother-in-law, and the family came to Kiryat Arba in 1971. Katzover said she has lived there for 55 years. She credited the influence of Rabbi Moshe Levinger, Rabbi Dov Lior, and other local rabbis with shaping her public activism and her outlook on settlement in the Land of Israel.
A major part of the conversation focused on the House of Hebron campaign. Katzover said she was one of 13 women who entered the building with dozens of children in an effort to renew Jewish settlement there. She described harsh living conditions, including shortages of water and electricity, and said the women and children stayed there for a long time. “If we had not been there, it would not have happened. You have to make the effort from below, you have to give the push,” she said.
She said that over the years she also led public campaigns to settle state land in Judea and Samaria. After the Gaza disengagement, she and Matar began working to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state and to advance Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria. “The issue of a Palestinian state did not leave the agenda, so then we decided we were going to fight on this issue of applying sovereignty to Judea and Samaria,” she said. Katzover expressed support for the current government, saying it should be preserved because it advances construction, infrastructure, and settlement, while warning against a change in power. She added that she sees more attachment to tradition and Jewish identity, especially among young people, and concluded, “Without struggle there is no progress. You need goals all the time, goals, goals, goals. Thank God there is a huge bank of goals, and we are moving toward it.”
