Irena Dmitrovskaya Schachter was born in 1930 to an civil engineer father and an economist/musician mother in Kiev. Living under the oppressive Stalin regime until World War II, Irena attended middle school and took art lessons, revealing a real talent at a very early age. In 1941, the Germans occupied Kiev, and so began a series of moves. On one ship leaving Konigsberg, Irena and her family watched as two ships before theirs hit mines and sank. The Dmitrovskayas survived, and they ended up in Osterode, Germany. At 19, Irena was accepted into the Werkkunstschule art school until finally her mother was sponsored to emigrate to the U.S.
