A Righteous Gentile’s own story

In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer by Irene Gut Opdyke and Jennifer Armstrong; Penguin Random House/ Ember; (c) 1999, 2015; ISBN 978-0-679-99181-6; 278 pages including appendices, $10.99.

By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO — This publication has reviewed, and will continue to review, numerous memoirs by Holocaust survivors. What makes this memoir different is that it is by a Righteous Gentile, who when she was a young woman, at great risk to her life, smuggled food to Jews in the ghetto, and later, hid Jews in the home of a Nazi major for whom she was forced to become a mistress.

The Poland in which Irene Gut Opdyke grew up was trapped between two tyrannical dictators–Hitler of Germany and Stalin of the Soviet Union. Both had only contempt for Poland and the Poles, which in Hitler’s case was only exceeded by his maniacal hatred for the Jews.

After the two dictators divided up Poland, temporarily forestalling the all-out war between their two countries, Irene Gut, first as a student nurse, and later as a prisoner, had bad experiences with both the Soviets and the Nazis. She was raped by Russian soldiers, and later forced to perform slave labor as a waitress and laundress for the German soldiers at a fortification adjacent to a concentration camp. Sickened by the food that was wasted by the German conquerors, when Polish people were starving, she began to secret food through a hole in a fence to the Jewish ghetto.

She saw the people of that ghetto murdered in an aktion, and came to understand that the Nazis intended to murder every Jew they possibly could, including those who worked with her in the laundry and in the kitchen.

At first she hid them in the laundry room, behind shelves; later in an air duct, and finally, after being assigned as a maid in the home of a German major who had taken a fancy to her, in the basement of his house. The major discovered some of the hideaways, and offered Irene a cynical deal: he would keep his mouth shut if she would sleep with him and become his mistress. She gave herself to save them.

There were other Jews whom Irene had smuggled to the nearby woods, where they fought as partisans. Eventually, after the major had to return to Germany because of the advancing Russian troops, Irene also took to the woods.

After the war, the many Jews whose lives she had saved told of her bravery. She was often honored, not only for her wartime valor but also for her continuing testimony to schools, civic organizations, and other groups, to make certain that people understood the true scale and scope of the Holocaust.

Opdyke died in 2003, but her work and good deeds live on, especially in this wonderful-to-read reissued book.

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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com. Comments intended for publication in the space below must be accompanied by the letter writer’s first and last name and by his/ her city and state of residence (city and country for those outside the U.S.)