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© Irene Butter

Why Irene H. Butter, a survivor of the Holocaust, feels she has a duty to share her story.

This story has also been published in German.

„It is more relevant to talk about this today than it was – let’s say – ten years ago. Because we can see the rising trend towards Nazism. I feel more and more responsible, I feel it is my duty to tell my story.“ That is how Irene H. Butter, who was born Irene Hasenberg to a Jewish family in Berlin in 1930, describes why, at 93, she is still active as a witness and survivor of the Holocaust.

In 1937, after the Nazis forced her grandfather and father to give up their bank, the family fled from Nazi persecution to Amsterdam – without her grandparents, who were later deported to Theresienstadt concentration camp and killed. Irene’s family themselves were arrested in 1943 and deported to Bergen-Belsen a year later. Thanks to travel documents for Ecuador issued by a supportive person in Sweden, Irene, her father John, her mother Gertrude and her older brother Werner were eventually released from the KZ, but John Hasenberg died on the way to Switzerland following the torture and abuse. The family was temporarily separated in Switzerland, but reunited in the United States where Irene continued to grow up, graduated from Duke University and became a professor of public health at University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

One forum in which Irene Butter recently told her life story is the podcast „Zeitkapsel: Irene, how did you survive the Holocaust?“ produced by the German public broadcast station NDR. Four 16-year-old girls from Hamburg asked Butter this very question – and many more: „The four girls were very special in probing me and asking very deep questions“ says Butter. Butter and the teenage girls spoke to each other via video link for a total of 22 hours and finally met in person in Germany: „That was a very meaningful experience for me,“ says Butter.

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In one of the conversations recorded in the podcast, Butter asserts that by listening to her story and engaging with it, the four girls themselves become witnesses to the horror of the Holocaust. Does she believe that the memory of the Shoah really can be kept alive in that way, even beyond the lives of those who lived through and survived it? „Well, it’s a hope.“

Butters lesson from Nazi-persecution: „Refuse to be enemies“

For Butter, this hope also means that young people in particular need to understand through her experiences what it means to live in a dictatorship hostile to humanity. In the four decades in which she has spoken publicly about the Shoah, the 93-year-old tells Frankfurter Rundschau, she has experienced time and again that those young people are capable of doing so and can identify with her story.

People who have heard her story feel obliged to follow Butter’s maxims, she says: „Never be a bystander, and refuse to be enemies.“ For Germans today, this means taking a stand against fascism – for example by joining in anti-AfD protests, as about a million people did a week ago.

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And yet Butter sees growing authoritarian tendencies in her own home country, the USA, and is also closely observing the renewed growth of right-wing extremism in Germany. Yes, in the face of her persecution by the Nazis, this feels like a betrayal to her, says Butter: „It shows that people don’t learn from history, even if we perhaps learn about history.“ So what does she think sharing her experiences can achieve? Butter explains it as an act of self-assertion: „I eventually made the transition of becoming a survivor instead of a victim – which of course I was. I realized if I think of myself as a survivor, then I am more powerful. I wanted it to be an activist and do things that will make a difference “ For Irene Butter, this means doing whatever you can – in your own work, in your personal relations or in contact with political representatives.

„The killing in Gaza should not happen.“

For Butter, this also applies to the war in Gaza. She has family connections to both Israel and Palestine, and more than 20 years ago she founded the Zeitouna group in Ann Arbor, in which Palestinian and Jewish women discuss the conflict in the Middle East, among other things. „After the Holocaust,“ says Butter, „the slogan ‚Never again‘ was repeated all the time. But that was a false promise. Although so many institutions are dedicated to it, there is now the war between Israel and Gaza, and it is just terrifying for me. I feel shame that so many people are being murdered for no reason. It does not need to happen and it should not happen.“ The memory of the Shoah, she says, ought to oblige all parties of the conflict to abstain from violence. „I think unless it is resolved, unless both peoples recognize each other as equals with equal rights and equal freedom and equal opportunities, then this will continue and there will be more war and unnecessary killing.“