In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer

(For high school students, teachers, and adults). In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer by Irene Gut Opdyke is a compelling memoir of a young Polish woman’s experience as a resistance fighter, rescuer of Jews, and survivor of both the German and Soviet occupations of Poland from 1939 to 1945. When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, Irene Gut lived in Radom where she was a student nurse. When Radom was attacked, Polish Army units retreated eastward and asked her to accompany them and help take care of the wounded. Irene did so and ended up in eastern Poland, which was under brutal Soviet occupation. Many miles away from her family, and eventually separated from the other hospital staff, Irene saw the savagery of Soviet soldiers and experienced the viciousness of the Germans. She had several gruesome experiences before finding that she could put her fluent German to good use by serving German officers in a dining hall and then becoming a housekeeper to a German Major who had requisitioned a local villa. It was a perfect place to hide 12 Jewish friends who were able to escape from the ghetto as other were deported to the camps. After the war, Irene Gut was able to immigrate to America and married William Opdyke, a United Nations worker whom she first met while in a displaced persons (DP) camp in post-war Germany. At 76, she decided to tell the story of her life during that horrific time and was helped in relating it by author Jennifer Armstrong. In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer is a powerful account of one person’s bravery in the face of unimaginable hate and violence, where wholesale murder, rape, and torture haunted her memories. Irene Gut Opdyke’s name was enshrined in 1982 in the Yad Vashem memorial in Jerusalem as one of the Righteous Among Nations for her heroic acts.

Date of Article: September 2023

Author: Gene Sokolowski

Source: In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer by Irene Gut Opdyke