The daughter of victims of the Holocaust, Karin trained at the Moscow State Jewish Theater during WWII and began performing after the war with her husband, Norbert Horowitz, in a traveling Yiddish theater they created for Holocaust survivors. She immigrated to the US in 1949 and enjoyed a successful career in New York's Yiddish theater scene, later expanding to Broadway and off-Broadway in shows including "The Wall," "Yentl," "A Call on Kuprin," "Scuba Duba" and "The House of Blue Leaves." Karin also made intermittent feature film appearances beginning the 1970s; her most memorable roles include the boisterous landlady, Yetta Zimmerman, in "Sophie's Choice" (1983) and Mrs. Schreier in "Enemies: A Love Story" (1991). Her TV roles include a stint as Jackie Mason's mother on the ABC sitcom, "Chicken Soup." Karin also distinguished herself as a reader of the works of Sholom Aleichem, and performed them annually on the anniversary of the noted author's death.