The peace activist provides a harrowing lesson in history for Middle School students.

It took 40 years for her to break her silence. In the early 1980s, Irene Butter—who by then was in her 50s—decided she must start to share her story since six million others could not. 

Butter is a German-American public health scholar and a Holocaust survivor. She is professor emeritus of Public Health at the University of Michigan. A German Jew, she survived the Westerbork and Bergen-Belsen camps in her youth. Since deciding it was her duty to share her story, Butter has inspired thousands over the past several decades through her presentations, lectures, film, books, and peace work. 

Recently, Butter came to Sidwell Friends to share her story with the Middle School. A tiny woman of 95 years old, Butter shared the joys of her childhood in Berlin, her family’s move away from the growing Nazi oppression to the Netherlands in 1937—where they were neighbors with Anne Frank and her family—and then to her traumatic experiences at Westerbork and Bergen-Belsen camps.

“Like all the Jews in Amsterdam who had come in hopes of escaping Nazi control in Germany, our lives started to shrink,” she explained. “One day we were mandated to wear yellow stars at all times, another day my bike was confiscated. Then we were told we could only go to the grocery after 3 p.m., when of course there was barely anything left to purchase.” Jews had to hand over their businesses, homes, and human rights. Then, in winter 1943, Irene and her family, along with thousands of other Jews, were rounded up and held at the Jewish Theater in Amsterdam. Her father's connections saved them—for a time; they were some of the few to be allowed to go home.

A Swedish connection tried to secure Ecuadorian passports for the family that would allow them safe passage, but those arrived the family was rounded up again in June 1943 and sent to Westerbork transit camp, a stopover for Dutch Jews before being sent to concentration or extermination camps. Butter explained that while Westerbork was not a death camp, it was terrifying, especially every Monday night when the names of those being transported would be read aloud.

The family managed to stay in Westerbork longer than most, but eventually in February 1944, they were put on a train to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they were greeted by snarling dogs and violent guards. There were daily beatings, lack of food, overcrowding, and rampant diseases. “Every day, it was difficult to stay alive,” Butter said. “Like most of the others at the camp, my family got terribly sick.”

By a stroke of good luck, however, the Ecuadorian passports they had sought earlier were finally granted, which gave the family a different status. Though the German regime knew the passports were not valid, they needed prisoners to trade for German prisoners held by the Allies. In January 1945, the family of four was taken to a Red Cross train to Switzerland for a prisoner exchange. They were free but at a cost. Butter’s father died the second night on the train and when they arrived in Switzerland, her mother and brother were rushed to hospital for their illnesses. Butter was sent to a refugee camp in Northern Africa.

Finally, after a long and lonely 18-month separation, Butter and her mother and brother were reunited in the United States.

During those years after the war, when she kept her story locked inside, Butter married, went on to become one of the first women to earn a PhD in economics from Duke University, had children, and then grandchildren.

Then, as she started to share her story more widely, she began visiting schools and was moved by how much the audiences, especially students, appreciated her story. She pursued peace work, co-founding the University of Michigan Wallenberg lectures and Zeituna, an Arab-Jewish women's dialog group. And always, she emphasized the importance of standing up for those in need.

After her talk, students asked more about her childhood, her peace work, and life during the Nazi occupation. Many lined up afterward, several thanking her profusely for coming and saying, “I’m so sorry that happened to you.”

Along with the letters her mother saved from when they were separated after the war, Butter recently donated to the United States Holocaust Museum her small orange blanket, which miraculously she had somehow kept with her from childhood.