Irene Osborne (Ingeborg Eichberg) was born in 1927 in Koblenz, Germany to Josef and Emmy Eichberg. On November 9, 1938, during Kristallnacht, their synagogue was destroyed by Nazis. The next day, the family’s apartment was raided and destroyed, and Irene’s father was arrested and taken to Buchenwald concentration camp. Irene fled with her sister, Ruth, and mother to nearby relatives in Koblenz, and then to Belgium, just across the border. Eventually, her father was allowed to leave Buchenwald, and the entire family reunited in Brussels in 1939.
In 1940, Germany invaded Belgium, and her father was again arrested and sent to the Les Milles camp in southern France near Marseilles. In 1941, Irene, Ruth, and their mother walked all the way from Brussels to Marseilles, where they stayed until 1942 when they were all rounded up by the Nazis and sent to Les Milles. In August 1942, their parents made the decision to separate from their daughters to give them a better chance of survival. Irene was 14-years-old, and Ruth was 16-years-old. Their parents were deported to Drancy, in Paris, and then to Auschwitz, where they were killed. The sisters left Les Milles but were soon arrested again and taken to Rivesaltes. While they waited at a rail stop to be transported to another unknown destination, a stranger (regarded by Irene as a guardian angel) took the girls into his care and put them on a bus to a children’s home in the mountains of Cantal, France. They lived there for seven months until they were forced to flee again before the arrival of German soldiers.
On the train to their next destination, the sisters hid in the restroom of the coach, pretending to be sick, thereby escaping the German soldiers on board the train. They were met by family and friends at the village of Aix-en-Provence and taken to another village, La Bastide des Jourdans, where they lived with an aunt and uncle under false identities until the arrival of the American army in 1944.
With the help of an American G.I., they located another aunt and uncle, who had escaped from Holland in 1939 and were living in Cincinnati, Ohio. The sisters came to live with them in 1946, and these relatives became like parents to them. In 1952, Irene met and married Harold Osborne (Hans Oppenheim), of San Antonio, Texas. Irene and Harold had three children. After his death in 1992, Irene came to El Paso to be near her children and grandchildren.