At the start of September, Irene arrived in Germany to promote the German edition of her book (Wir hatten Glück, noch am Leben zu sein, Schoeffling + Co.) and to visit places her father lived and worked.
The first evening’s reception brought together the German promotion team, organized by Caroline Schmidt of TV/radio network Nortddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR). The highlight was Irene's meeting Milla, Ida, Lonneke, and Mathilda, the four Geman schoolgirls who interviewed Irene for the very popular German podcast “Irene, wie hast du den Holocaust überlebt?" (Irene, How did you survive the Holocaust?).
The next day Irene presented to hundreds of high schoolers and adults in Hamburg. followed by a book signing. Her messages of “Never a bystander” and “One person can make a difference” brought people to tears. During the signing, one woman talked about her family’s struggle with shame from the war. Her grandfather had been an ardent Nazi supporter and it was only through confronting him that he eventually began to question his role. The woman knows the importance of keeping the awareness of the Holocaust alive. Not as a way to foster shame, but the opposite. Only through fearlessly facing the past can they move through the shame and transform it into action for good.
After lunch, Irene with book co-authors John Bidwell and Kris Holloway and personal assistant Hannah Hensel traveled to the village of Elmshorn. It was the first time Irene saw her father’s childhood home and the graves of her father’s parents. In front of the home was a Stolperstein. Found throughout Europe, Stolperstein mark the places where victims of the Holocaust lived. This one reads: ‘Here lived John Hasenberrg. Born 1892. Fled to Holland. Interned in (transit camp) Westerbork. Deported on February 16, 1944, to (concentration camp) Bergen-Belsen. Dead from detention on January 23, 1945.’
The following day Irene found another Stolperstein commemorating her father, this one in Hamburg and marking where her father lived after leaving Elmshorn and starting his career in banking.
A highlight of the trip was Irene’s appearance on the TV show DAS, an interview with host Inka Schneider on her famous red couch. There were 1,000,000 viewers. At the end of the show, Inka presented Irene with a gift: a 1930 German edition of Heidi, the protagonist who helped inspire Irene through some of her darkest times.
The trip wrapped up in Laupheim, the village where her father is buried.
After dying on the train that took Irene and her family out of Bergen-Belsen, her father’s body was wrapped in his jacket and left on a train station bench in the village of Biberach (the train was on its way to Switzerland where Irene’s family was traded for Germans). It was only years later that Irene learned her father had been first buried in Biberach and then reburied in a Jewish cemetery in Laupheim. Irene’s gratitude to the people of Laupheim is profound.
In Laupheim, Irene was greeted by new mayor Ingo Bergmann, the press, and other local leaders. Especially moving was reuniting with Micha Schick who takes care of the Jewish cemetery and her father’s grave. the visit overlapped with a German Day of Service that included school children visiting the graveyard to learn about the Holocaust. Irene and others placed stones on her father’s grave (a Jewish practice of remembrance and respect for the deceased).
Irene’s goal is always to reach at many people as possible, and with this, she was immensely successful. The German edition of the book was an overnight bestseller (selling out as #1 in Amazon’s Historial Biographies). And Irene got to retrace the steps of her father, the man she credits with saving her, her mother, and her brother.