Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
Born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1932, Dr. Irene Miller was told she is the only Holocaust survivor that travels to speak.
“Time is running out. I would like as many schools and other institutions to invite me to speak because there will not be other opportunities to learn about the Holocaust from a living survivor,” she stated in a telephone interview Friday afternoon.
Miller will share her story at 6 p.m. June 23 when she comes to speak at the Warsaw Performing Arts Center, 1 Tiger Lane. Her speaking engagement is sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Fort Wayne and the Warsaw PAC, and is an extension of the Americans and the Holocaust exhibit at the Warsaw Community Public Library from June 20-24.
“I want to attract as many people as possible to the event. I want every seat in the art center to be filled,” she said.
Adolf Hitler was legally appointed chancellor of Germany on Jan. 30, 1933, - less than a year after Miller was born - and rapidly dismantled Germany’s institutions with his Nazi Party. Miller, now 94, was about 6-1/2 when her family decided to flee Poland to Russia.
As to why her family chose to go to Russia, Miller said, “Don’t think of Russia in the terms that the world thinks of them now. In 1939, Russia was viewed very differently than now. Communism was viewed as a very progressive movement. It is only after World War II that Communism in Russia became the monster.”
Russia was viewed by most intellectuals and thinking people as the progressive movement.
“And my parents were great believers that the freedom to workers, that Russia was the ideal place where workers get their justice done. They were disenchanted once they went there, but ... don’t think of Russia in the terms that the world thinks of them now,” Miller said.
She and her family ended up in the Siberian work camps.
“They just picked us up in the middle of the night,” she recalled. “At that time, when they picked us up, it was just my sister and I.”
The whole story, including why her parents were not there, can be found in her book, “Into No Man’s Land: A Historical Memoir,” which was published in 2012.
She said it was very scary. She estimated they were in the work camps for 2 to 2-1/2 years. “Very, very, very difficult conditions.”
As a child in Russia and the work camps, Miller said she didn’t know of anything going on in the world, but she also wasn’t sure the adults did either.
“There was no correct radio communication. So I don’t know that the adults did, but if they did, maybe they didn’t share it with us children,” she said. “But, I, as a child, did not know what was going on.”
It was only after World War II was over Miller learned of the details like the concentration camps.
“When I heard, I didn’t think of my family members individually. I could never think that anything will happen to them. I was just horrified of the stories that I heard, (I thought) maybe some had been exaggerated in some way, unrealistic. I was just horrified. By then I was a young teenager,” she recalled.
After the work camps, and some time in an orphanage in Uzbekistan, they returned to Poland for about five years. In 1950, she went to Israel, where she met her future husband, who was from Detroit.
Miller didn’t talk much about her story for a long time.
“I started writing the story after my daughter Naomi was killed in a traffic accident,” she said. “I intended at one point to write the story when I retired, when I had time, and Naomi kept asking me, asking me to tell her and I never wanted to. I didn’t talk to my children about it. They never heard my story, maybe a little bit here and there.”
Some time after Naomi’s death, Miller wrote her book in the form of telling her story posthumously to Naomi. She had to learn to type and bought a computer and started writing the book. It was published in 2012 by the University of Michigan.
“It was very, very emotional and very difficult. I did a lot of crying writing the book,” she recalled.
It took less than a year from the time she began writing the book to the time it was published.
When people come to hear her speak June 23, she said, “The overall thing I want them to hear is what hate and prejudice did, and what hate and prejudice can do again unless we learn from it.”
She uses her story to promote tolerance and diversity and to “show what happened when prejudice was ruling.”
Miller hopes she motivates people to stand up to injustice.
“I have spoken all over the country, and also in Canada, and I have some marvelous feedback from some schools where I planted a seed and how they picked it up and made a wonderful story of it,” she said.
She’s told students that we each have a responsibility to do everything we can to make the world a little better for everyone.
“I told them how I do it, and explore with them how they can do it. It’s some marvelous things that came out of it,” she stated.
“I have never had a situation that I would say I had a problem with the audience. Everywhere, the reaction is just heartwarming,” she said.
Miller, who turned 94 in April, earned her Doctor of Humane Letters from Oakland University in 2025. Previously, she earned her Bachelor of Science in Psychology and her Master of Science in Social Psychology from the University of Cincinnati; and her Master’s of Business Administration with a major in hospital management from Xavier University, Cincinnati.
She is a docent at the Detroit Institute of Arts, where she still gives tours and teaches art. She is a court mediator and travels all over the country. She said she remains active and has no time to slow down.
“I have no time to slow down. I still have an awful lot to do, so I have to live to at least over 100,” Miller stated.
Visit her website at irenemillerspeaker.com
