In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer Read online

  In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer

  Irene Opdyke Jennifer Armstrong

  Laurel Leaf (2008)

  Rating: ★★★★☆

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  Amazon.com Review

  When World War II began, Irene Gutowna was a 17-year-old Polish nursing student. Six years later, she writes in this inspiring memoir, "I felt a million years old." In the intervening time she was separated from her family, raped by Russian soldiers, and forced to work in a hotel serving German officers. Sickened by the suffering inflicted on the local Jews, Irene began leaving food under the walls of the ghetto. Soon she was scheming to protect the Jewish workers she supervised at the hotel, and then hiding them in the lavish villa where she served as housekeeper to a German major. When he discovered them in the house, Gutowna became his mistress to protect her friends--later escaping him to join the Polish partisans during the Germans' retreat. The author presents her extraordinary heroism as the inevitable result of small steps taken over time, but her readers will not agree as they consume this thrilling adventure story, which also happens to be a drama of moral choice and courage. Although adults will find Irene's tale moving, it is appropriately published as a young adult book. Her experiences while still in her teens remind adolescents everywhere that their actions count, that the power to make a difference is in their hands. --Wendy Smith

  From Publishers Weekly

  Even among WWII memoirsAa genre studded with extraordinary storiesAthis autobiography looms large, a work of exceptional substance and style. Opdyke, born in 1922 to a Polish Catholic family, was a 17-year-old nursing student when Germany invaded her country in 1939. She spent a year tending to the ragtag remnants of a Polish military unit, hiding out in the forest with them; was captured and raped by Russians; was forced to work in a Russian military hospital; escaped and lived under a false identity in a village near Kiev; and was recaptured by the Russians. But her most remarkable adventures were still to come. Back in her homeland, she, like so many Poles, was made to serve the German army, and she eventually became a waitress in an officers' dining hall. She made good use of her positionArisking her life, she helped Jews in the ghetto by passing along vital information, smuggling in food and helping them escape to the forest. When she was made the housekeeper of a German major, she used his villa to hide 12 JewsAand, at enormous personal cost, kept them safe throughout the war. In translating Opdyke's experiences to memoir (see Children's Books, June 14), Armstrong and Opdyke demonstrate an almost uncanny power to place readers in the young Irene's shoes. Even as the authors handily distill the complexities of the military and political conditions of wartime Poland, they present Irene as simultaneously strong and vulnerableAa likable flesh-and-blood woman rather than a saint. Telling details, eloquent in their understatement, render Irene's shock at German atrocities and the gradually built foundation of her heroic resistance. Metaphors weave in and out, simultaneously providing a narrative structure and offering insight into Irene's experiences. Readers will be rivetedAand no one can fail to be inspired by Opdyke's courage. Ages 10-up. (Aug.)

  Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

  Praise for

  In My Hands

  “Powerful and life-afţrming, this is the kind of exciting memoir that marks a reader forever.”

  —The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)

  “Even among WWII memoirs—a genre studded with extraordinary stories—this autobiography looms large, a work of exceptional substance and style.”

  —Publishers Weekly, Starred

  “The narrative pours out in a hurried rush … it effectively captures the bedlam and turmoil that is war, where every decision could be one's last.”

  —Booklist, Starred

  “No matter how many Holocaust stories one has read, this one is a must, for its impact is so powerful.”

  —School Library Journal, Starred

  “Opdyke's startling account is not to be missed. No reader can emerge unaffected by this profound firsthand narrative of the Holocaust.”

  The Riverbank Review

  “Opdyke uses simple direct language to demystify the concept of heroism and depict courage as a matter of basic human decency well within the capabilities of ordinary humans.”

  The Washington Post Book World

  “The power of Irene's true story keeps the reader spellbound.”

  The Horn Book Magazine

  “Opdyke's memoir reads like a wildly escalating adventure, hair-raising and suspenseful: a young woman with no power dares to save Jews right under the eyes of the Nazis, with a quick lie, a flirtatious smile, and an arrogant manner sometimes all that stands between her and death.”

  —The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

  “A gripping and graphic memoir about brave deeds and unspeakable evil.”

  San Francisco Chronicle

  “Few memoirs of the Holocaust tell in such vivid detail what it was like for a non-Jew to risk life day after day, year after year, to save the lives of people Hitler was bound to exterminate. No one reading In My Hands will ever forget the devotion to humanity this young Polish Catholic girl lived, and almost died by.”

  Milton Meltzer, author of Rescue: The Story of How Gentiles Saved Jews in the Holocaust

  “A story of extraordinary moral courage.”

  —The Miami Herald

  “In My Hands doesn't disappoint for an instant. It is unfailingly eloquent—and it is the quality that makes another book on an oft-explored subject worth reading by anyone who loves transcendent emotional truth.”

  —The Mercury News (San Jose)

  “Readers will not soon forget Irene Gut Opdyke. Which is as it should be.”

  Family Life

  ALSO AVAILABLE FROM DELL LAUREL-LEAF BOOKS

  SHATTERED: STORIES OF CHILDREN AND WAR

  Edited by Jennifer Armstrong

  BECOMING MARY MEHAN: TWO NOVELS

  Jennifer Armstrong

  FAREWELL TO MANZANAR

  Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston

  THE WAVE, Todd Strasser

  LORD OF THE NUTCRACKER MEN, Iain Lawrence

  THE LAST MISSION, Harry Mazer

  NUMBER THE STARS, Lois Lowry

  FORGOTTEN FIRE, Adam Bagdasarian

  Irene Gut Opdyke wishes to express her thanks to the following:

  To God, the creator of all living things.

  To Pastors Al and Loretta Forniss from my church, Desert Bloom Ministries, for their love and support.

  To Jennifer Armstrong, Reverend Frank Eiklor of Shalom International, Rabbi Haime Asa, Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis, Father Karp of John Paul II Church, the United Jewish Appeal, and the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

  Also to my daughter Janina, son-in-law Gary Smith, grandchildren Ray and Robert, and to Larry, Lyn, and Josh Nantais for their continued love and help in my endeavor to bring togetherness among all people.

  And to all the people in the churches, temples, and schools I have spoken to, remember, “Love, not Hate.”

  To my daughter, Janina.

  And for the young people, who can accomplish the impossible and can achieve greatness by finding the strength in God and in the goodness of the human spirit. I dedicate my life story to encourage them to find hope and strength within themselves. Courage is a whisper from above: when you listen with your heart, you will know what to do and how and when.

  With all my life—

  Irene Gut Opdyke

  I dedicate this book with love and respect to Irene.

  Jennifer Armstrong

  Tears

/>   PART ONE

  I Was Almost Fast Enough

  PART TWO

  Finding Wings

  PART THREE

  Where Could 1 Come to Rest?

  Amber

  Postscript

  Polish: A Rough Guide to Pronunciation

  German: A Rough Guide to Pronunciation

  Some Historical Background

  Maps

  Readers Guide

  Tears

  There was a bird flushed up from the wheat fields, disappearing in a blur of wings against the sun, and then a gunshot and it fell to the earth. But it was not a bird. It was not a bird, and it was not in the wheat field, but you can't understand what it was yet.

  How can I tell you about this war? How can I say these things? If I tell you all at once—first this happened, and then this, and these people died and those people lived and then it was over—you will not believe me. Sometimes I wonder if these things could have happened. Was it me? Was that girl me? Was I really there? Did I see this happening? In the war, everything was unnatural and unreal. We wore masks and spoke lines that were not our own. This happened to me, and yet I still don't understand how it happened at all.

  So I must tell you slowly. Slowly, and with everything fine and clear. I will start at the beginning, because it started long ago.

  Before time, before there was a Poland, the trees wept as they fell into the Wisła. The great river carried the trees north into the Baltic and mingled their tears with the sea. Centuries passed, and the fishermen on the coast hunted the shoreline for those tears— they had become golden pearls of amber washed smooth by the waves. From Byzantium, from Rome, from the steppes, and from the Holy Land, the merchants came north for the amber that held the sun in its heart. Then the Teutonic Knights swept like a storm wave into Poland and took the amber trade prisoner. No one could buy the gems except from these German knights, and Polish smugglers were put to death in the fortress of Malbork.

  When the Germans stormed once more into Poland in 1939, we smuggled again. But this time it was not amber. They were tears of another sort.

  Lilac Time

  Kozienice is a small village in eastern Poland. Here, on May Day, 1921, my mother went to the riverbank with her friends. It was dusk, and the breeze carried the scent of lilacs. The call of a cuckoo from the forest made the village girls laugh as they picked their way among the reeds and forget-me-nots at the water's edge, and the grasses brushed their ankles with dew as they passed. My mother carried a block of wood with her name written on it, Maria Rębieś. Also on the block of wood were a stub of candle and a small wreath of flowers.

  Each of the laughing girls carried a block. Again the cuckoo called from the birch trees while Maria and her friends lit their candles. The smell of the matches and burning wax mingled with the scent of lilac. Clutching their skirts up around their knees, the girls waded into the chilly water to launch their boats. The fleet of candles drifted out into the current, turned and bobbed as though bowing farewell, and floated away.

  Downriver were the young men, and among them was Władysław Gut, a young architect and chemist who was overseeing the construction of a nearby ceramics factory. He stood apart from the other young men on the riverbank, smoking a cigarette and watching as they joked and wrestled in the shallows.

  Gut did not think, at first, that he would join the village men in their holiday game. The ancient folk customs of this rural countryside near the Ukrainian area of Poland seemed like relics of a long-ago century. But the twilight was deepening, and the laughter rose in excitement as the flock of candles came into view, floating beneath the slender green fingers of a willow. The lights were bewitching. Gut tossed his cigarette into the damp grass and walked nearer to the water to watch the May boats drift toward him. Swallows dipped and skimmed over the water and arced away.

  The men were wading out now, teasing one another over their sweethearts, each one hoping to get the boat with her name on it. Gut bent quickly to unlace his boots and peel off his socks, and then waded into the water with the others, the hems of his city trousers clinging to his legs.

  “How will you know which is Janka's boat, Tadek?” one man called.

  “She promised to put only bluebells on it,” came a reply over the dark water.

  “Did you hear that, Marek? Janka's boat has bluebells— if you want her that's the boat to catch!”

  Gut stood with the stream coursing past his legs. In the darkness of the woods behind him, an owl hooted. The hairs on his arms rose at the cold and at the eeriness of the fairy lights that moved silently toward him. One boat floated apart from the others, farther out in the current. He felt carefully with his bare feet over the stones on the streambed and stepped out deep. Maria Rębieś’ candle sailed straight into his outstretched hands, like a bird settling onto its nest.

  I like to think of my parents meeting this way, to think of the sweet and happy years of Poland's independence between the wars. I like to think of the scent of lilacs luring my father into the water in his city clothes, and my mother in her white dress, sitting on the bank upstream with her knees tucked up under her chin, dreaming of the man who would catch her boat. They were married soon after, and I was born on May 5, in 1922, when the lilacs were blooming again.

  We lived for my first year in Kozienice. Our house sat just above the river, and in the spring of my first year, the sound of the rushing water spoke to me through the open windows. While my mother was busy one morning, I made my baby way out of the house, toddling across the new grass to the water. Our dog, Myszka, followed. I tottered at the brink, watching the flashing water as it streamed past.

  Then Myszka sank her teeth into my diaper and began tugging backward. Stubbornly, I tried to crawl forward to stare again into the water, but the dog would not let go. She also could not bark, so this tug-of-war went on for several minutes as I inched my way closer and closer to the edge.

  Then, the silent voice that speaks in mothers’ ears whispered to my mamusia. She looked out the window, and with a shriek she sped outside. “Irena!” Gasping, she snatched me from the water's edge. Myszka collapsed on the ground, wagging her tail, as Mamusia praised and thanked her.

  For several days, our heroic dog was the talk of Kozienice. Neighbors, friends, members of our church—one by one they stopped by to marvel at little Myszka and stroke my baby face. The rabbi from Kozienice's synagogue came by to bless us both, and our priest took Mamusia's hands in both of his. “God has plans for your daughter, Pani Gutowna. We must watch to see what little Irenka does.”

  Father, or Tatuś, as I called him, thanked the priest and the rabbi, and said they would indeed expect much of me.

  Over time, as we moved from Kozienice to Chełm to Radom and to Suchednów for Tatuś’ job, one sister, then another, then another, and then another arrived, every two years or so, until there were five girls running and screaming around the house: Janina, Marysia, Bronia, Władzia, and me, Irena. Even our new dog, Lalka, was a female.

  When my youngest sister, Władzia, was born, we moved to Częstochowa, northwest of Kraków. Thus, I spent several years living at the feet of the Black Madonna, the mother saint of Poland, who dwells in the shrine of Jasna Góra, the Bright Mountain fortress. Our home was next door to the church of St. Barbara, and we had a clear view up the tree-lined avenue to Jasna Góra. Every year on the Virgin's important holy days, pilgrims would come from all over Poland to worship at the shrine. My first sister, Janina, and I would go outside to offer lemonade and water to the pilgrims, who made the final approach to the shrine on their knees.

  We also lavished our tender, girlish care on wounded animals all the time. Cats, dogs, rabbits, birds—we brought our small patients home to Mamusia, who tended them expertly. The animals that could get better did, and we would let them go or find homes for them. The animals that could not get better died, and we held solemn burials in the backyard, in the shadow of St. Barbara's lofty sanctuary. My mother once raised a baby blackb
ird we had found fallen from its nest, and it always lived nearby and would fly in through the open window when she whistled for it. One fall, when the storks began to migrate, we discovered a young stork with an injured wing who was trying to fly off with his fellows. He couldn't get off the ground, so we bundled our coats around him and took him home, being careful of his long, sharp beak.

  “Mamusia, can you fix it?” I called as Janina and Marysia and I carried the lanky bird into the kitchen.

  Mamusia and our hired girl, Magda, were chopping cabbage for pickles. Mamusia turned around, wiping her hands on a towel. Her eyebrows went up in surprise at the ungainly creature standing before her, blinking its black button eyes and clacking its yellow beak against the back of a chair. It had a strong wild smell of mud. While Janina and Marysia and I watched, Mamusia flexed the stork's wing and then began to bandage it.

  “What will you call him?” Magda asked us as our mother worked.

  “Bociek,” Marysia piped up. “Can we keep him, Mamusia?”

  “He cannot go south with his friends this winter,” our mother said. “But you cannot keep a big stork in the house. He might be dangerous, and we do not want him to lose his wildness. He should rejoin the other storks in the spring when they return. Put him in the cellar.”

  “I can catch frogs for him,” Janina said.

  “Me, too,” I said. “And fish. We'll make him strong.”

  “You might have to feed him mice when the winter comes and the water freezes,” Mamusia said.

  Janina and Marysia and I all pulled faces at that. Bociek bobbed his head as though agreeing, and then dabbled with his beak at his new bandage.

  The door to the dining room opened, and the little ones, Bronia and Władzia, peeked in. Bronia stared at Bociek. She stared at Władzia. The girls backed out and the door swung shut.

  We moved Bociek into the cellar and kept him fed and warm. As the winter descended on Poland, many other birds flew south to escape the cold. And then the snow came.