Community-wide funds are managed by the Jewish Community Foundation and are open to contributions from anyone who would like to help grow them.
Irene Butter Fund for Holocaust and Human Rights Education
Irene Butter (center) with Generations After Group, Ruth Messinger and Patti Askew Kenner at the Launch of the Fund
The Irene Butter Fund For Holocaust And Human Rights Education was founded in April of 2023 by Generations After, Temple Beth Emeth’s group of adult children and descendants of Holocaust survivors, with generous support from donors in Washtenaw County community and across the globe. The fund’s name honors the legacy of Irene Butter, humanitarian and internationally known Holocaust survivor. Its purpose is to support educational programming that keeps the lessons of the Holocaust alive, and to help address modern-day challenges of “othering” and disregard for human rights.
A revered member of our Ann Arbor community, Irene Hasenberg Butter is an internationally-known Holocaust survivor, educator and peace activist. She is a co-founder of Zeitouna, a dialogue group consisting of Jewish and Palestinian women working for a just peace, and a co-founder of the Raoul Wallenberg Lecture Series at the University of Michigan. Irene is the subject of two movies, Refusing to Be Enemies: The Zeitouna Story (2007)and Never a Bystander (2014), and is a featured subject in Jan Jarboe Russell’s New York Times bestseller The Train to Crystal City: FDR’s Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America’s Only Family Internment Camp During World War II (Scribner, 2016). Her personal memoir, From Holocaust to Hope: Shores Beyond Shores, A Bergen-Belsen Survivor’s True Story (TSB, 2019; Leapfrog Press, 2021), was a National Jewish Book Award finalist. Irene received a PhD in Economics from Duke Universityand is a Professor Emerita of Public Health at the University of Michigan.
Among her many accolades, Irene is the recipient of the 2011 Genesis of Ann Arbor Distinguished Humanitarian Award, the 2019 Ann Arbor Rotary Club’s Robert S. Northrup Humanitarian Award and most recently, the Officer’s Cross Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, an award equivalent to the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom.
You can learn more about the breadth of Irene’s accomplishments, honors and activitism in Holocaust and Human Rights Education at her website, https://www.irenebutter.com/.
Contributions to the Irene Butter Fund For Holocaust And Human Rights Education fund will enable annual grants to be awarded to support educational programming about the Holocaust, with a focus on how its lessons can help us address modern-day challenges of “othering” and disregard for human rights. The Fund is intended to honor Irene Butter’s many humanitarian contributions by supporting projects that embody her mantras of “Never a bystander,” “Refusing to be enemies” and “All people are our kin.” To contribute to this fund, please donate here.