Irena Urdang de Tour was born in Warsaw, Poland, the daughter of Seweryn Ehrlich vel Sluszny and Felicja (Lubelczyk) Ehrlich. In November 1940, she was confined, with her parents and sister Danuta, to the Warsaw Ghetto where she worked in an Electropol factory. She escaped the ghetto to the Christian section of Warsaw in March 1943, where she acquired false documents and worked as a maid. In September 1944 she joined the underground, building barricades, organizing shelters, and working for the Red Cross. Following the suppression of the uprising, she was sent to a slave labor camp in Berlin with her aunt who also possessed false documents. There she worked in the Schwartzkopf factory manufactoring war material. At the end of the war de Tour walked to Warsaw to search for family members. Her father had died in the Warsaw uprising, and she and her mother and sister were placed in the Bindermichl Displaced Persons Camp in Linz, Austria, where she worked for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration as an interpreter and secretary. In July 1946 the family left for New York City. De Tour was employed as a bookkeeper, secretary, buyer, and was a fiction and feature editor for Town and Country, Gourmet, and the Paris Review . In 1952 she married Laurence Urdang, a lexicographer; they had two daughters, Alexandra and Nicole. She received her B.A. from Hunter College in 1956. A writer and poet, de Tour also ran an antiques business for many years and was involved in a number of charitable organizations, including CARE.
Biographical information posted by the Jewish Women's Archive [accessed 6/8/2011].
Additional de Tour materials can be found at the Museum of Jewish Heritage; Jewish Women's Archive; and Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, among others.
From the guide to the Irena Urdang deTour Collection of Holocaust Materials., undated, 1975-2012., (Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries)
