Holocaust Survivor Irene Butter to Speak to Students Monday

Irene Butter, a Holocaust survivor who knew Anne Frank, is speaking in a special assembly, Monday, Nov. 1, at 9:30 a.m.  Mrs. Butter is currently a member of the executive committee of the Raoul Wallenberg Project at U-M, as well as Professor Emerita of Health Management and Policy at the U-M School of Public Health.

“There are few opportunities to hear first-hand accounts of this significant period in human history, and Mrs. Butter is a highly accomplished woman who has lived an extraordinary life,” says dean of students Luke Jansen. “It should be a very compelling presentation.”

Originally from Berlin, Germany, Mrs. Butter’s family moved to Amsterdam, Holland in December 1937. There the family became briefly acquainted with another German family in exile, the Franks and their daughter Anne Frank.

In a round-up of Jews in June 1943, Mrs. Butter and her family were sent to the transit camp Westerbork and ultimately on to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in February 1944, where she again made brief contact with Anne Frank, who was in an adjacent section of the camp.

Through the assistance of relatives in the U.S., Mrs. Butter was able to come to the U.S. in December 1945. Her mother and brother followed about a year later. She resumed her schooling and with a scholarship was able to go to a university and then pursued post-graduate studies achieving a Ph.D. in economics.

She is married and has two children, Pamela and Noah, and is currently very active in the Raoul Wallenberg Project at U-M, honoring the Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Jews, as well as in “Zeitouna,” an organization of Jews and Arabs working for peace.