Free Lecture at Champaign Aviation Museum
Thursday, September 24th, 2026 at 11:00am:
I Became Irene
Presented by Ruth Barnett of the Nancy & David Wolf Holocaust & Humanity Center
Ruth Barnett, daughter of a Holocaust Survivor, tells the story of her mother, Irene Levin, who was born Josepha Weil in 1927. Josepha was the child of a large, prosperous, secular family in the Sudetenland, a German corridor of western Czechoslovakia. When Josepha was 11 years old, her father died. By December 1941, Josepha, her mother Irena, and stepfather Georg, were deported to Terezin, where they were imprisoned for over two years. Deportation to Auschwitz and slave labor at a subcamp called Christianstadt followed. In January 1945, with the Russians advancing, Josepha and her mother were forced on a death march, which spanned 200 miles in ice and snow. Then they were loaded into a cattle car to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where Irena died. The British liberated Bergen-Belsen in April 1945. After several months of recovery from typhus, Josepha returned to Prague. In 1947, Josepha immigrated to America and adopted her mother’s name, Irene.
This free event will be held in the CAM Library.
Champaign Aviation Museum
1652 N. Main St., Urbana, OH 43078
937-652-4710
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Champaign Aviation Museum is Site #13 on the Aviation Trail
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