Irene Weiss on Liberation (SoL)

Irene recounts her experience of being liberated by the British Army from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany in April 1945. Irene Weiss was born Irene Traub on August 2, 1919, in Halmeu, a small Jewish community in Romania. In March 1944, Irene, her parents, and seven siblings were deported to the Szatmar ghetto in Transylvania where they stayed for two months. In June 1944, Irene was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau where she was separated from her parents, who would perish in the gas chambers, and began work as a forced laborer. In October 1944, she was taken to the Guben forced labor camp in Germany. In January 1945, Irene was sent on a three-week death march to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. There, Irene was liberated by the British Army in April 1945. She married her husband, fellow survivor Joseph Weiss, in February 1947. After living in communist Romania, Irene and Joseph immigrated with their two children to the United States on September 24, 1964, where Irene found work as a dressmaker. At the time of her interview in December 1994, Irene was living in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and had four grandchildren.

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