In My Hands Excerpt Brochure
Here is a brief summary of Irene's story: Irene Gut was sixteen years old in 1939 when first the Russians and then the Germans invaded her native Poland. Along with many other Catholic Poles, Irene was forced to work for the German army, but she defied them in every other way. While working in the kitchen and laundry room of a Nazi barracks, she saved hundreds of lives by warning Jews in the Tarnopol Ghetto of impending raids and by regularly smuggling food and supplies to those hiding in the Polish forest. Given the job of housekeeper in a German Major's villa, Ms. Opdyke managed to smuggle twelve Jews into the basement of his home just hours before the ghetto was to be liquidated. She hid them successfully for nearly a year before they were discovered by the Major. His price for silence was that Irene must become his mistress. This she endured for months until the Germans began losing ground to the Russians and she was able to help her wards escape into the woods. When the Germans were driven from Poland, the Russians remained and Irene continued to fight the injustices she saw. She joined a successful group of partisan saboteurs and soon found herself on the Russian Red Army's Most Wanted list. In an ironic twist of fate, she was herself hidden by the same Jews she had hidden in the German Major's basement. Irene learned that her mother and sisters had been arrested by the Russians in hopes that they would reveal her whereabouts. Knowing she would only endanger her family more by trying to contact them, Irene allowed her friends to smuggle her into a Jewish repatriation camp. There she was interviewed by William Opdyke, a delegate from the United Nations, who approved heremigration to the United States. And so, at age 26, Irene sailed alone into New York Harbor to begin her life anew, Five years later she and William Opdyke would meet again by chance in a cafeteria at the U.N. Six weeks after that they were married and they lived happily and quietly for many years. It wasn't until 1975, when she heard a neo-Nazi call the holocaust a hoax, that Irene decided she must share her story. Today she travels and speaks extensively about her experiences and is especially drawn to groups of young people, whom she hopes to empower with the message that each of us can and must decide for ourselves what is good and what is evil and behave accordingly.