Irene Brauner Holocaust survivor dies aged 87 - The Jewish Chronicle

Irene Brauner, a Polish Holocaust survivor who escaped the Jewish ghetto in Krakow by pretending to be a Catholic, has passed away at the age of 87.

Born in Krakow in 1937 to parents Hela and Willy Hauser, Brauner was just two years old when the Germans invaded Poland and forced her family into the ghetto. Brauner’s father Willy was deported to the Crimea as a forced labourer shortly after arriving, but Brauner, Hela and her grandmother Karolina were able to escape in 1940 thanks to some falsified papers supplied by a Catholic family friend.

In a testimony for the ‘My Story’ initiative by the Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR), which documents the life stories of Holocaust survivors, Brauner detailed the fraught years of her early childhood when she, her mother and grandmother remained in Krakow under false Catholic identities, narrowly escaping capture several times. But in 1943, when they learned that Willy had been executed by the Gestapo and feared that the authorities would come looking for them, a friend of Hela’s arranged to send the trio to a relative in Germany where, with their fake identities, they could work as Polish labourers.

Irene and her mother in Krakow, circa 1945. (Photo: AJR My Story)[Missing Credit]

Brauner and her mother stayed on a farm doing physically demanding work, sleeping in a tiny room above the cow shed, while her grandmother worked at a nearby restaurant. She was six years old when the Russians advanced into Germany, prompting them to flee the area with other labourers and in their retreat they narrowly survived several close encounters with Russian bombs. Travelling with no destination in mind, the group eventually came across a platoon of Polish soldiers making their way back home and were invited to join.

"The Polish soldiers were all very friendly, but of course, they didn’t know we were Jews,” Brauner said in her AJR testimony. “Mother had taught me the Catholic prayers and I wore a cross, so naturally the soldiers thought we were Catholic.”

The trek back to Poland took four months. Upon their return to Krakow, Brauner, Hela and Karolina moved into a small flat and sold looted goods given to them by the soldiers to keep afloat until they found work.

When the war ended, the Red Cross notified Hela that her two brothers were still alive and were stationed in Italy with the section of the Polish army under British command. Brauner and her mother and grandmother thus ventured to Italy, a sunny place that seemed to Brauner like the “Garden of Eden” after living in grey post-war Poland, where they were reunited with Hela’s brothers for several months before joining British and Polish armies on trains bound for England.

Irene and her mother on the train back from Germany to Poland, with her dress hanging up to dry behind her. (Photo: AJR My Story)[Missing Credit]

They spent the winter of 1945-46 living in a Nissen hut, sleeping on iron army beds, in a small village in Wiltshire, before moving to London. Brauner attended the North West London Jewish Day School in Willesden and life became much easier; she lived in a first floor flat in Cricklewood with her mum and grandmother until Hela remarried, at which point they moved to a spacious home on Shoot Up Hill, where Brauner had her own bedroom for the first time.

She reflected in her testimony: “When I think back over my dramatic childhood, I am full of admiration for my brave mother. A young woman from a small town, looked after first by her parents, then by a loving husband, who was thrown into the horrors of the Holocaust and was able to survive and save herself, her little daughter and her middle-aged mother, through sheer guts.”

Irene and Jacob on their wedding day. (Photo: AJR My Story)[Missing Credit]

A self-described tomboy, Brauner enjoyed running and playing football with the boys in the street and loved looking after the family's two dogs, Juno and Dusty. At 12, she began attending the Hasmonean girls school and, after her education, she became a freelance interpreter. When Brauner was 21 she fell in love with a man she met whilst visiting Israel; Jacob, an engineer, eventually joined her back in London, where the couple soon wed and bought a house in Kingsbury. They quickly welcomed their first son Jonathan in 1962, then their second son David in 1968. The family often took vacations to Italy, a place Brauner had adored since her childhood stint there. She is survived by her children and two grandchildren, Joey and Jessica, for whom she was inspired to share the full account of her life.

“Irene’s story is one of courage, resilience, and the will to survive amidst unimaginable peril,” said AJR CEO Michael Newman. “Her journey, from ghetto confinement and secret Catholic identities to forced labour, separation, and finally escape, embodies the many paths of survival and resistance during the Holocaust.”

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Obituary

Holocaust survivors