Irene Farkas-Conn

ARLINGTON, Va. — Irene Farkas-Conn, Ph.D., a Hungarian refugee who helped thousands of fellow Hungarian Jews escape from the Holocaust in a self-rescue operation and later became a leading figure in information science in the United States, died Oct. 11 in Arlington. She was 89.During World War II, she and members of her family used the Glass House, the Budapest headquarters of the family glass business, to cram more than 3, 000 Jews into all available space — chairs, desktops, stairs, closets — to shield them from the constant Nazi deportations to death camps.Meantime, the adjacent Swiss legation issued 7, 500 protective passes Schutzpasse and as deportations accelerated, a second batch of 7, 500 passes. But then the Swiss stopped issuing passes. With increasing pressure of deportations, volunteers and Jewish Glass House employees began working around the clock forging more protective passes. Many people used the passes to escape to Palestine, the future Israel, then a British mandate.While stories about the Glass House have emerged, easily accessed on the internet, many are filled with errors, Farkas-Conn said shortly before she died.”There was a strong tradition in our family that one does the right thing, privately and quietly. For this reason, neither of my two uncles who were instrumental in the success of this self-rescue operation, nor my mother, had written anything about it. Yet this is a story that should be told: of bravery, of Jews standing up under adversity and organizing an operation in a desperate attempt to save their people.”