In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer

Amazon.com
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.


From School Library Journal
Grade 6 Up-When WWII began, Irene Gut was 17, a Polish Patriot, and a good Catholic. Forced to work for the German Army, her blond hair, blue eyes, and youth brought her the relatively safe job of waitress in the officer's dining room. She used this Aryan mask to pick up conversations and pass the information to the Jews in the ghetto, along with food and blankets. She smuggled people from the work camp into the forest. When she was made the housekeeper of a Nazi major, she hid 12 Jews in the basement of his home until the Germans' defeat. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Irene Gut was 17 and a student nurse when the Nazis invaded Poland. Within a year's time, she had experienced more horror than most people see in a lifetime, including being raped by Russian soldiers. Irene's tangled journey eventually takes her to a Nazi complex, where she is forced to work as a waitress. The building abuts a Jewish ghetto, and Irene starts leaving food for the residents. This first step toward helping the beleaguered Jews leads to Irene's ever-increasing involvement: passing information, then smuggling Jews from a work camp into the forest, and, in her boldest, most dangerous act, hiding 10 Jewish men and women in the basement of the Nazi major for whom she works. When the major, who has always fancied the pretty, Aryan-looking Irene, learns of her deception, he shockingly agrees to keep her secret--if she will become his mistress. This Irene does willingly to keep her charges alive. The first-person narrative pours out in a hurried rush as if the young Irene is almost trying to rid herself of her memories as well as tell her story. Although this technique does not allow readers to know any of the other people very well (the Jews hiding in the basement are almost indistinct), it effectively captures the bedlam and turmoil that is war, where every decision could be one's last. Still, there are certain images that stand out in relief: Irene's insistence that one of the Jewish women in hiding continue her pregnancy, and the horror of seeing a Jewish baby thrown in the air and shot down like a bird. There are so many Holocaust books these days, each touching in its own way. Opdyke's is special, not only because of its unique perspective (and its focus on the years directly before and after the war when Irene spied against the Russians) but also because it speaks so personally to teenagers. Irene is one of them. The fear, horror, worry, and bravery she recounts so affectingly could have been theirs. The question becomes more than what would you do? It is also who will you be if you survive? Ilene Cooper


From Kirkus Reviews
PLB 0-679-99181-6 Opdyke opens her story with her parents' first meeting in 1921, closes with a 1949 invitation to emigrate to the US, and in between straightforwardly, with restrained passion, lays out a strong tale of innocence burned away by repeated atrocity, of courage fueled by anger and opportunity. A teenaged student nurse separated from her Polish family, the narrator goes from caring for wounded to waiting tables in a German officers' mess and being a German major's housekeeper, but not before being sexually assaulted by Russian and German soldiers alike, arrested and interrogated, and witnessing systematic massacres and casual brutality. Unable to stand by, she contrives to shelter 12 Jews in the cellar of her employer's own villa, and helps them escape into the wild; in the war's closing months, she joins the Polish Resistance. Although there is evil in plenty here, Opdyke does not see all of her enemies as utter monsters, and with Armstrong seamlessly filling in the inevitable gaps in 50-year-old memories, she paints a coherent, compelling picture of her times, and of the moral necessity that compelled her to action. (b&w photos) (Biography. 13-15) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Review
“Powerful and life-affirming, this is the kind of exciting memoir that marks a reader forever.”–The Plain Dealer



Review
?Powerful and life-affirming, this is the kind of exciting memoir that marks a reader forever.??The Plain Dealer



Book Description
In My Hands began as one non-Jew’s challenge to any who would deny the Holocaust. Much like The Diary of Anne Frank, it has become a profound document of an individual’s heroism in the face of the greatest evil mankind has known.

In the fall of 1939 the Nazis invaded Irene Gut’s beloved Poland, ending her training as a nurse and thrusting the sixteen-year-old Catholic girl into a world of degradation that somehow gave her the strength to accomplish what amounted to miracles. Forced into the service of the German army, young Irene was able, due in part to her Aryan good looks, to use her position as a servant in an officers’ club to steal food and supplies (and even information overheard at the officers’ tables) for the Jews in the ghetto. She smuggled Jews out of the work camps, ultimately hiding a dozen people in the home of a Nazi major for whom she was housekeeper.

An important addition to the literature of human survival and heroism, In My Hands is further proof of why, in spite of everything, we must believe in the goodness of people.



Card catalog description
Recounts the experiences of the author who, as a young Polish girl, hid and saved Jews during the Holocaust.


From the Inside Flap
In My Hands began as one non-Jew’s challenge to any who would deny the Holocaust. Much like The Diary of Anne Frank, it has become a profound document of an individual’s heroism in the face of the greatest evil mankind has known.

In the fall of 1939 the Nazis invaded Irene Gut’s beloved Poland, ending her training as a nurse and thrusting the sixteen-year-old Catholic girl into a world of degradation that somehow gave her the strength to accomplish what amounted to miracles. Forced into the service of the German army, young Irene was able, due in part to her Aryan good looks, to use her position as a servant in an officers’ club to steal food and supplies (and even information overheard at the officers’ tables) for the Jews in the ghetto. She smuggled Jews out of the work camps, ultimately hiding a dozen people in the home of a Nazi major for whom she was housekeeper.

An important addition to the literature of human survival and heroism, In My Hands is further proof of why, in spite of everything, we must believe in the goodness of people.


From the Back Cover
“Powerful and life-affirming, this is the kind of exciting memoir that marks a reader forever.”–The Plain Dealer



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