Irena (Gottdenker) Weinberg (1922 -- 2007) | Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust

Irene was the older child of Norbert Gottdenker and Helena Iger, born on January 25, 1922 in Lwow (Poland, now Lviv, Ukraine). A year later, her younger brother, Karol was born.

  Helene (Hinda), born in Podwolochisk (Austro-Hungary, now Ukraine) was daughter of Nissin (Nathan) Iger, a descendant of Rabbi Akiba Eiger, and Chaja Sas. Norbert (Nachman), son of Koppel Gottdenker and Sossia Zarwanitzer, was born in Dolina (Austro-Hungary, now Dolyna, Ukraine).

Norbert worked as a supervisor for a lumber company’s rail transport system, owned by his maternal grandfather, Moses Zarwantizer and his son, Judah. In the mid-1030’s, he brought the family to Bolechow, a neighboring Dolina. He passed away shortly thereafter and the family moved back to Lwow.

Irene started music and arts studies at the Lwow Conservatory but in September of 1939, the Germans invaded Poland and divided it with the USSR, who took control of Lwow. Irene had to interrupt her studies and found work as a bookkeeper in “Trust”, the largest department store in Lwow.

In 1941, the Germans invaded the eastern part of Poland and occupied Lwow (Lviv).

Helena was caught in a dragnet of Jews who were herded into a school building where they were mauled by attack dogs. She was saved by a Ukrainian friend who risked his life to enter the building and pull her out .Some 4000 Jews were killed in pogroms at this time and 2000 more shortly thereafter.

The German regime forcibly segregated all Jews. Irene immediately lost her job and her family was forcibly removed from their home at Grundwalska Street No. 12 without being able to take any of their possessions.

Her mother was again caught and sent into the Janowska labor camp. Helena was executed by machine gunning in a mass killing at the Piaski (sandy hills) near the Janowska labor camp, outside Lwow. She was made to fall into her own grave.  Irene was able to hide out in the dark and dank cellar of the house while a friend secretly brought her food to sustain herself with.  By the summer of 1942, she had to vacate the cellar, as the Germans were beginning to hunt down Jews by use of tracking dogs.

Survival now depended upon having a piece of paper that proved that the bearer was a Pole or a Ukrainian, not of Jewish ancestry. Among the false names she used was “Pilsudskowa”, similar to the name of Poland’s first Chief of State, Pilsudski. Later, she would use her jobs in various government agencies to get access to government stamps and forms, and with her art school training, was able to make the false papers look authentic.

What she was able to do herself, she also did to help others survive.

Her brother Karol escaped with false papers to Buczacz (Buchach) to the east of Galicia and lived there with a Polish family. The local underground helped him and he brought food to the partisans. In the last days of the war, the Nazis rounded up every available man among the Poles to draft in to their defenses. At the checkpoint, they must have discovered he was circumcised and they killed him.

Her aunt Dora, sister of Helena, obtained false papers and found refuge with Irene in an apartment building.  Irene got false papers from someone who also got her a job; the connection was a German officer, from Czechoslovakia, who was in secretly a Jew who had passed himself off as Aryan to save his wife and brother–in-law, after his own parents had been killed, and used his position to help other Jews. She started as nanny to a German family and then worked in a personnel department in a lumber office.

Irene did not have the “typical” Jewish features that Nazis looked for; for example, she had blue eyes, unlike most Jews who had dark eyes. She spoke Polish without any trace of Jewish dialect and German as well so she could pretend to be a Polish Catholic of German national origin (Volksdeutsche).

She was identified and stopped on the street by a Jewish woman who blackmailed her. She escaped her blackmailer and obtained new papers.

On the same day that she was blackmailed, Lwow was bombed.

She took the first train out of Lwow. She went on to Warsaw and was able to notify Dora of her new location; her aunt met up with her there.

Again, she escaped detection several times; at one times, she survived in an underground cellar at Sw. Janska Street, No. 13, an old section of Warsaw, helped again by a Polish friend.

She managed to get a job the Ministry of Agriculture as a secretary to the Secretary of Personnel, and had access to official stamps and seals; with her training in art she could to forge documents.  She saw to it that her boss, a drunk, had plenty to drink.

She obtained residence in an apartment building used by German army officers in exchange for taking care of the apartment. She hid her aunt, Dora, in a closet in her own room, inside the apartment of the Nazi officers

During the last days of war, in August of 1944, the Soviet and Polish troops approached. Warsaw was in a panic, there was widespread burning and looting, bodies all over. The Germans took 50 people from the Irene’s office at rifle point and put them on trucks, to use as hostages to cover their escape. They stopped some15 kilometers from Warsaw, to labor camp, but all was in disarray. The Germans fled and then the hostages jumped out of the truck windows, and were hidden by the local Poles.

Irene made her way to Silesia, closer to the German border. Since she spoke German. Ukrainian and Russian, she was put to work in a vinegar factory, part time in the office, part time in the factory, washing bottles. She was also put to work in a labor camp three times a week near the Oder–Neisse line to dig anti-tank trenches to stop the Soviet Red Army, first in Miszkowa, then in Gleiwitz - Ober- Silesia. The tank traps failed, as the Soviet Red Army circled from behind.

During the last three days of fighting in Silesia, there was anarchy; as the Soviets came, people ran amuck and wild. A German friend offered to help Irene, but when the Soviets approached, he was afraid, “The Russians will tear us apart”.

Irene took the opposite approach. She and her friends dressed up in the best clothes. The Soviet soldiers came upon them, were stunned to see them, took just a preliminary survey, and left. In February 1945, the war ended in Silesia.

At least the war was over. She wandered from town to town (mostly coal mining towns), still using her Aryan papers. She returned to Warsaw to look for her aunt and  then went on to Częstochowa, and worked in a drug company.

After war’s end, she stayed in Poland for about a year. After the massacre of Jews at Kielce, she joined the Bricha (the movement to bring Jews into Palestine from the refugee camps at that time). She was taken to Vienna where she met her father’s cousin, Rabbi Dr. Wilhelm Weinberg. They moved to the refugee camps in Hallein, Austria, where he was in charge of adult education. They married there and in 1948, Rabbi Weinberg he was chosen as Landesrabbiner (State Rabbi) of Hesse (Frankfurt on Main and the surrounding regions).They moved to Frankfurt, where she bore their only child, Norbert Weinberg.

In 1951, they came to New York. Her husband passed away in 1975 (His documents are archived at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum).

Irene Weinberg passed away on July 15, 2007 in West Hollywood, California, survived by one son, Norbert, married to Ofra, and three grandchildren and four great grandchildren.