Irene Weinberg

The full story of Irene Weinberg can be fond online at[ [http://www.courageofspirit.com]. Follow link at top of webpage for " Megillat Esther". Irene Weinberg, a native of Lwow, Poland(now Ukraine), was studying art

           and music when the Germans invaded Poland. She survived by taking on 

           a false identity and working in German occupation government 

           offices. When her identity was uncovered, she escaped to Warsaw, 

           where again, she survived under false identity and obtained work in 

           government offices. 

           She lived in a building occupied by German Army and SS officers and 

           hid her aunt inside a closet in her apartment. With her access to 

           government documents, she was able to provide false identity papers 

           to other Jews who could thereby stay out of the Warsaw ghetto and 

           the extermination camps.

           Toward the end of the war, she was drafted into labor camps as a 

           Polish non-Jew. After liberation, she escaped Poland into Austria, 

           where she met and married Rabbi Dr. William Weinberg, a leader among 

           the Jewish refugees. They moved to Frankfurt, Germany, where he was 

           appointed State Rabbi of Hesse, and she was his right hand as he 

           dealt with the rebirth of the Jewish community under the auspices of 

           the American military and the new German government.

           They moved to the United States in 1951, and for several years she 

           worked as an artist for a decorated goods company while her husband 

           mastered English in order to serve as a rabbi in America. In the 

           following years, she assisted with Jewish education in her husband's 

           congregations and was active with sisterhood, Hadassah, and other 

           Jewish organizations.

           In later years, she tutored youth for bar mitzvah, volunteered at 

           the Bureau of Jewish Education and sang with a senior chorus that 

           performed for residents at retirement homes.

Rare phtographs of her experience are available online at the website of the Galicia Jewish Museum in Krakow:

http://www.forum.galiciajewishmuseum.org/viewtopic.php?t=32