Irene Opdyke

Irene Gut Opdyke was a courageous Polish girl during WWII. She did not just save her own life but she also saved sixteen Polish Jew’s lives. She was only a teenager during the rise of the Nazis. She did everything she could to save Jews like hiding them behind false walls, in forests, in basements, and various places. Irene had to go through many hard times because she was taking the risk when she saved Jews to endanger herself even though she was not a Jew. Irene had to escape twice from incarceration, and was captured and raped by Soviet soldiers.

Irene was the oldest of five children in the family and was separated from her family to train to be a nurse when the war had started. She traveled 200 miles north in central Poland in nursing school. Irene spent many years as a nurse during the bombing and threat against the Polish citizens because the Nazis were invading Poland. When she got homesick, it took her many years to meet her family again because of the danger of going back. One day, she was arrested by the Soviet military and was selected for labor to work in a munitions factory, where she fell terribly ill. A German officer, Major Rugemer, felt sympathy for Irene. Because she was quite attractive, he gave her a position in the kitchen in a hotel for the Nazis. He took care of Irene and let her stay with him. Irene became his mistress because of Major Rugemer’s kindness to her.

From the hotel kitchen, Irene had a clear view of how the Nazis were treating the Jews, and she felt pity for them. One day, as she later recalls as the most gruesome act she has ever seen, she saw a German officer tossing an infant into the air and shooting the baby, then shooting the grieving mother. From that day on, she started taking action to save Jews, and started putting leftover food in a box and would leave them right inside the ghetto fence for the Jews to eat.

Irene worked very hard to save Jews after she saw the terrible treatment the Jews were getting. Irene met twelve Jewish workers who worked in the Gestapo hotel laundry room. She helped them by giving them extra food and blankets. One day, Irene overheard the Gestapo discussing how they would take all of the Jewish workers away on the night of the raid. Irene then passed the word to her Jewish friends for them to get ready to escape. Irene drove six of her Jewish friends she was saving to the forest of Puszcza Janowska. Once they were safe, they escaped into the dark reaches before the Nazis could discover them. Not only that, but Irene also hid her other Jewish friends behind a false wall in the laundry room on the night of the raid.

One day, she overheard from the Gestapo that they were planning to wipe out the whole ghetto in Ternapol. Irene thought that her Jewish friends had nowhere to go. Then, surprisingly, Major Rugemer told her that he wanted to move to a villa, which was a great hiding place, and she would be his housekeeper.

The night the Germans came to the village, Irene led the sixteen Jews she was hiding into the forest. She saved them from the concentration camps. Irene not only saved sixteen innocent lives, but she also shows us today that even in the darkest times, always do the right things. She sets a great example for the future if we ever have another war like WWII. I think that she did the right thing for the right reason. She did not just help the Jews because she wanted to be famous, but she did it because she knew it was the right thing to do. I think that Irene was very courageous to save those Jews and she put her life in danger for it. Also, she had empathy for those Jews and because she had empathy for them, she helped them and saved there lives. One other trait Irene showed was she had a lot of perseverance. If she had given up, those sixteen Jewish lives would have been lost. She had to go through many obstacles and difficulties to save those Jews but at the end, she did save them. Irene may not have always shown integrity because she had to lie to the German Soldiers, but she did it only because she was saving lives, which is operating at a higher level of reason to do the right thing. If she had told the truth, those Jews would have been killed. After the war, she was recognized at Yad Vashem as a Righteous Gentiles for her heroic act during the war.

Bibliography

Books
1. In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer
Author: Irene Gut Opdyke with Jennifer Armstrong
Annotation: This book talks about the whole life of Irene from when she was born to when the war ended. It is an autobiography by Irene.
Date: 1999

Websites

2.http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shtetl/righteous/irene.html
Author: Irene Gut Opdyke
Title: PBS or Shtetl
Date: 1995
Annotation: This article is how she went through the hard times in her life when she risked her life to save Jews.

3. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/opdyke.html
Author: Adam Bernstein
Title: Jewish Virtue Library
Date: 2003
Annotation: This article is about how Irene was captured, what she went through, and what happened to her after the war.