Irene Hofstein (1921–2016)

Irene Hofstein, née Schlesinger, was born to a Jewish family in Berlin, Germany. In July 1939, she and her mother succeeded in escaping the Nazi regime by emigrating to the USA. Her father survived World War II and the Holocaust in the Netherlands, to which he had emigrated in 1933 with his second wife, who was not Jewish. Irene's beloved maternal grandmother, Jenny Pelz, was unable to leave Germany and died in Auschwitz in 1944. Irene became a medical secretary and managed an orthopedic practice for 30 years. She married Egon Woods, with whom she had two daughters, and then Guy Hofstein, her childhood sweetheart. Throughout her life, Irene spoke to many student groups about her experiences under the Nazis, and was interviewed for Steven Spielberg's Shoah project. Her memoir, Irene: Chronicle of a Survivor (1997), describes pre-war life in Nazi Berlin with the help of letters from her grandmother and other close relatives left behind.