Irene H. Butter

Last updated
Irene Hasenberg Butter
Born
Irene Hasenberg

1930
Berlin
NationalityAmerican
Alma mater Queens College
Duke University
OccupationEconomist
Known forHolocaust survivor
SpouseCharlie Butter
ChildrenTwo

Irene Hasenberg Butter (Berlin, 1930), is a German-American Professor Emeritus in Economic Sciences at the University of Michigan and a Holocaust survivor.

Contents

As a German Jew, she survived a dramatic journey from Berlin to the United States via the Westerbork and Bergen-Belsen camps in her youth. Thanks to a prisoner exchange arranged by her father, she was able to leave the last concentration camp with her family to journey to Switzerland, France and Algeria at the end of 1945 and went eventually to the United States. [1]

Biography

Irene Hasenberg and her brother Werner were born in Berlin, Germany to John and Gertrude Hasenberg. They were a family of bankers including her father and his grandfather before him. The small family practiced Reform Judaism and were fully assimilated into the local culture and considered themselves German. [1] [2]

Amsterdam

In 1937, her father's bank was taken away from him "because of its Jewish ownership" and soon other assaults followed, which caused her father to move his family to Amsterdam, Holland in December 1937. [3]

However, when the German forces invaded the Netherlands in 1940, new hostilities against Dutch Jews followed and her father made arrangements to get foreign travel documents from a Swedish businessman, an effort that paid off in the weeks that followed. [1]

Detention camps

Before the new passports arrived, German occupiers deported the Hasenberg family from Amsterdam to nearby Westerbork transit camp in February 1944. In the camp, Irene Butter reconnected with some acquaintances from the Jewish neighborhood where she had lived in Amsterdam, including her friend Hanneli Goslar as well as Hanneli's close friend Anne Frank. [3] [2]

It was in Westerbork that Butter's father received a package forwarded from his Amsterdam address containing Ecuadorian travel documents for each member of the family. [1] [2] Because they had acquired safe new national identities, they were moved from Westerbork to a special section of Bergen-Belsen camp for foreigners and from there they were sent to Switzerland as part of an exchange for German citizens. [2] However, Irene's father died before leaving Germany from injuries inflicted by his Bergen-Belsen captors. [1]

Irene was fourteen and weighed only seventy-nine pounds [4] when she was sent to an Algerian refugee camp of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency, where she could eat and recover from her mental and physical hardship. With the help of American relatives, she was sent to the United States and on Christmas Eve of 1945, she arrived in Baltimore, Maryland. Six months later she was reunited with her mother Gertrude and brother Werner, who made the crossing from Europe to the United States by plane. [1] [3]

United States

Armed with a college scholarship, Irene focused on her education and attended Queens College in New York. She then earned a Ph.D. in economics from Duke University at Durham, North Carolina. While studying at Duke, she met and married fellow student Charlie Butter and they had two children. Upon graduation, Irene and her family moved to the University of Michigan where she became a professor of economics and published many journal articles related to her research. [1] [2]

Peace activities during retirement

After her arrival in the US, Irene was told that it would be wise to keep silent about the Holocaust and her war experiences in Germany and the Netherlands, but when her high school daughter Pamela proposed a school project in 1976 about Irene's war experiences, Butter relented and told her stories to Pamela as well as the entire class. The positive feedback she received encouraged her to expand her talks to wider audiences, including a panel discussion about the diarist Anne Frank, who died in German captivity. [3] [5]

Butter is a professor emerita of health management and policy at the University of Michigan and continues to publish academic papers. [1] [5]

Legacy

Selected publications

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Westerbork transit camp</span> Nazi transit camp for Jews in the occupied Netherlands

Camp Westerbork, also known as Westerbork transit camp, was a Nazi transit camp in the province of Drenthe in the Northeastern Netherlands, during World War II. It was located in the municipality of Westerbork, current-day Midden-Drenthe. Camp Westerbork was used as a staging location for sending Jews to concentration camps elsewhere.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bergen-Belsen concentration camp</span> Nazi concentration camp

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hannah Pick-Goslar</span> Close friend of Anne Frank (1928–2022) and Holocaust survivor

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Marianne "Janny" Brandes-Brilleslijper was a Dutch Holocaust survivor and one of the last people to see Anne Frank. She is the sister of singer Lin Jaldati. Both Brandes-Brilleslijper and Jaldati were in the Westerbork, Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps with Anne and her older sister Margot Frank.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abraham Asscher</span>

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Weinmann, Hans (2003). "Butter (Hasenberg), Irene". The Zekelman Holocaust Center . Retrieved 2022-07-15.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Luckerman, Sharon (2003). "April 25, 2003 - Image 50". The Detroit Jewish News Digital Archives. Retrieved 2022-07-15.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Halpert, Julie (2020). "Never Forget Her Story". Alumni Association of the University of Michigan. Retrieved 2022-07-15.
  4. 1 2 "Ann Arborite Evelyn Neuhaus". Ann Arbor Observer. 2012-01-23. Retrieved 2022-07-15.
  5. 1 2 3 "U-M professor and Holocaust survivor Irene Butter shares memoir | Engaged Michigan" . Retrieved 2022-07-15.