Irene Weiss was born in 1930 in B—tr‡gy, Czechoslovakia (now Batrad, Ukraine). When Nazi Germany dismembered Czechoslovakia in 1939, her town came under Hungarian rule. Over a two-month period beginning in May 1944, nearly 425,000 Jews were deported from Hungary to Auschwitz-Birkenau, including Irene and her family. Irene was 13 years old.

After 8 months of slave labor in Birkenau, Irene, her older sister, and two aunts were forcibly evacuated on foot from Auschwitz in January 1945 to concentration camps in Germany. In 1947, Irene, her sister and one aunt immigrated to New York.

Irene married Martin Weiss in 1949 and they moved to northern Virginia in 1953. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in education from American University and taught in the Fairfax County Public school system for 13 years. Martin passed away in January 2013. Irene has three children, six grandchildren, and three great grandchildren. A volunteer at the U.S Holocaust Memorial Museum, Irene is a frequent sp