An Auschwitz survivor

Irene Wiess, born 1930 in Botragy, Czechoslovakia, now Bartrad, Ukraine, arrived at Auschwitz in 1944 with her family. Today she lives in Virginia in the US.

"I threw myself into family life. I married young, I had three children, (I now also have four grandchildren) and then I went to college and became a teacher. You fall into a routine and do the best you can. But I’ve never lost the feeling of how unreliable human beings are and neither am I fooled by superficial civilisation. But I realise that loss of faith in people is more devastating than loss of faith in God."