COLDWATER, MI (WTVB) – A woman who was freed from a Nazi concentration camp in Germany near the end of World War Two at the age of 15 spoke this week in Coldwater to Legg Middle School students.
Irene Butter, who came to the United States in 1945, went on to earn a Ph.D. in economics and become a professor at the University of Michigan.
Butter told the students Tuesday that she managed to survive more than a year in the Bergen-Belsen camp, where they didn’t have gas chambers, but a handful of epidemic illnesses took a deadly toll on the prisoners.
Butter’s memoir of her ordeals are contained in a book she wrote titled “Shores Beyond Shores”. She was also a co-founder at the U of M in 1993 of an on-going lecture series called “One person can make a difference to build a better World”.
According to Butter, everybody can do something, no matter how little it is. She went on to encourage the students to develop a social conscience so that when they witness discrimination, injustice, or meanness, they take the responsibility to try to address the problem.
Butter will present a lecture and have a book signing at the Tibbits Opera House in Coldwater Saturday, March 28, 2020 at 2:00 p.m., co-sponsored by the Tibbits and the Branch District Library.
(reporting from Jim Whelan)
