During fifth hour on Monday, January 13, the entirety of the freshman class went to listen to the story of Dr. Irene Butter, a survivor of the Holocaust. Kicking off the event, Mrs. Clark introduced and listed the many achievements Dr. Butter has earned, including the Order of Merit of Germany, the equivalent of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She also co-founded Zeitouna, a peace group consisting of Arab and Jewish women, based in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Butter’s story is filled with sadness, hatred and forgiveness. As a young girl, she lived in Berlin, Germany, with her parents and grandparents. After the Nazi takeover of Germany, her father moved her and her mother and brother to Amsterdam. It was there that her family was captured and taken to Westerbork, a concentration camp in the Netherlands.
Despite the hardships she faced, she made it her mission to help those around her, especially the children.
“We didn’t have extra food or water; love was all we could give them,” Butter said.
Here and later at Bergen-Belsen, a Nazi concentration camp, Butter experienced horrors and mistreatments beyond imagination. Poor sanitation, severe starvation and frequent beatings were just a few of the travesties that occurred in the camps. It was because of Bolivian passports and a prisoner trade she, her mother and her brother all gained freedom and eventually made their way to the United States.

Butter said, “My dream was that I would buy [skis], and I would ski in the mountains of Switzerland.” She wanted to ski down the Alps like the character Heidi in the book “Heidi” by Johanna Spyri.
Dr. Butter spoke about her reasons for sharing her experiences. She said that she was invited to participate on a panelat panel at an Anne Frank exhibition when it “dawned on her” that she should tell the story that Anne Frank would never be able to. Ever since, she has shared her story to schools and institutions around the world.
“Human beings are made of the same fabric, and discrimination is an injustice and can be a crime, so I stand for people who are deprived in our society,” Butter said.
The ninth-grade English classes recently finished reading the book “Night” by Elie Wiesel, which is a memoir about Wiesel’s experience as a Jewish child in the Holocaust. This wraps up their unit on the Holocaust, and to commemorate it, the school organized for Butter to come tell her story and share her message.

Butter has many messages that she disperses wherever she presents, including that human beings are all made of the same fabric. Perhaps her largest message, “never be a bystander,” is meant to encourage people to help the helpless. Her documentary is rightfully named “Never a Bystander.”