Irene Gut Opdyke

Irene Gut Opdyke (born Irena Gut on May 5, 1922 in Kozienice , Poland , died on May 17, 2003 in Fullerton , California ) was a Polish nurse who saved the lives of a number of people of Jewish origin threatened by the Shoah . She was named Righteous Among the Nations in 1982.

Life and career

Irena Gut came from a Catholic family in a small village in eastern Poland, she was one of five daughters. The family moved from their place of birth Kozienice to Chelm and from there to Radom , where they attended a nursing school. After the German invasion of Poland at the beginning of World War II , she joined the resistance, hid in the forest near Ternopil , but was tracked down by Russians, raped and left in the snow to die. She survived and was forced to work in a hospital . She fled to Kiev , was arrested again, and fled again. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union , which began with the occupation of eastern Poland in 1941, she was picked up by the German occupiers in a church in Radom and forced to work in an ammunition factory. There she fainted or fell ill because of the hard work. Major Eduard Rügemer noticed her, probably also because of her blonde hair and her good looks. The major then gave her easier work in a cafeteria for German officers. From there she observed how SS men shot unarmed ghetto inmates and set attack dogs on them. When she was about to scream out loud, the German cook Schulz covered her mouth: “Don't scream. They might believe that you are a friend of the Jews! ”From then on, her goal in life was to help the persecuted. She procured leftover food from the kitchen of the cafeteria and brought it to the barbed wire of the ghetto. She knew that helping the deportees would be punishable by death .

In April 1942 she came to Lwów with the major's company and made friends with Helen Weinbaum, a Polish Catholic woman who was married to a man of Jewish origin. Again she had to pass out and watch as Germans hunted down people of Jewish origin and shot all those who could not run fast enough. However, a terrible scene became the trauma of her life: An SS man tore her baby from a mother, threw it into the air and shot it "like a bird." Then the SS man also shot the horrified mother of the baby. Irene Gut couldn't believe what she was seeing: “Oh God! My God! Where are you! ”The following night she prayed, pleading for understanding:“ In the morning the insight came - in my soul, in my heart: God gives us free will to be good or bad. ”And she made a demand to God: “Help me help!” Then she began to provide Jewish prisoners with information from the cafeteria and to smuggle them from the ghetto into Polish forests.

The major's unit was relocated again, now to Ternopil , where Irene Gut had had bad experiences with soldiers of the Red Army . In the market square she had to witness the execution of a Jewish couple and the Pole who had hidden them. All three were hanged in public. When she later ran Major Rügemer's household, she hid twelve women and men of Jewish origin in his cellar. Among them was her friend Helen's husband, Henry Weinbaum. The major discovered this by chance when he came home early and two of the hidden women helped her with the housekeeping. Subsequently, she was certain that he would notify the Gestapo : "Irene, I don't want to extradite you, but I have my instructions". Irene Gut pleaded for the lives of these people. For the major, too, an ad would have been embarrassing. An agreement was reached: she became the lover of the much older man, then around 60, he spared the twelve people. Irene Gut writes in her book that the admission would have been "worse than rape". A few years later she said in an interview: “A small price to pay for so many lifes.” (A low price for so many lives.)

She confided in a priest and hoped for the absolution of their affair. However, the priest asked her to end the arrangement and sacrifice the twelve Jews. "Well, I couldn't agree with this ..." (Well, I couldn't agree with him ...) was her answer. Among those in hiding was a pregnant woman. The group wanted the abortion because a newborn's screams would put all twelve at risk. Irene Gut resisted and Roman Haller was born on May 10, 1944. He survived the Nazi regime and the Holocaust . Herschel Morks, one of fewer than 200 survivors of the Jewish community of Ternopil , which once numbered 18,000 , emphasized that Irene Gut Opdyke not only saved his life three times, but also that of his wife, brother and sister-in-law. At the beginning of 1944 she fled with her twelve Jewish survivors to the Polish forests, hid there, but had to part with them. When the Red Army captured Poland, they were arrested again. Again she managed to escape. The people she rescued now helped her, disguised as a Jew, to get into Germany's American zone of occupation after the war .

After the fall of the Nazi regime, Gut worked in a camp for displaced persons in West Germany. An American diplomat, William Opdyke, announced that the United States would be proud to welcome her as a citizen. She then went to the United States in 1948 or 1949. A few years later she met the same man again in New York , married him in 1956 and the two had a daughter. She worked as an interior decorator and spoke little or nothing about her experiences during the Nazi regime. Until one day a student called for a survey and asked whether the Holocaust had actually happened in their eyes. "That put me on fire" (That angered me!), Should have been her reaction. "How can someone ask such a thing? I was there. "

effect

In the 1970s she began to dedicate herself to memory work as a contemporary witness . A rabbi from her neighborhood tried to get her recognition and in 1982 she was recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations . Murder Shark Paldiel: "That is not one, not two people, but twelve people in the house of the enemy", who were rescued. Her first book Into the Flames was published in September 1992 . In 1995 John Paul II thanked her on a visit to the USA in Irvine for her heroic deeds and gave her the papal blessing .

In 1999 she wrote In My Hands , co-authored with Jennifer Armstrong and published by the prestigious Random House publishing house . It received tremendous reviews and became a substantial public success. The book has been translated into several languages. In total, more than a million copies were sold.

A dramatization of her life story of Dan Gordon - Irena's Vow (dt. Irene's vow ) - was born on 22 September 2008. Off-Broadway -Theater Baruch Performing Arts Center premiered. Tovah Feldshuh took on the leading role and Michael Parva directed it . The great success with the audience made the producers take the risk of bringing this production out on Broadway . However, the premiere on March 29, 2009 received mixed reviews and the production then only ran for three months.

Katy Carr , a British singer and songwriter of Polish origin, dedicated the song Mała little Flower to her in 2012 , which was inspired by Irene's experiences during the Nazi regime. The Polish radio station Polskie Radio 3 , or Trójka for short , nominated the song as Song of the Week on September 26, 2012 . The song is part of the album Paszport , which was named Best Concept Album at the 13th Independent Music Awards in July 2014 .

Her daughter Jeannie Opdyke Smith is traveling through the USA today as a Holocaust Memorial Speaker (second generation contemporary witness) and speaks in schools and at events. Irene Gut Opdyke had two grandsons and three great-grandchildren at the time of her death.

The rescued

Clara Bauer Thomas Bauer Ida Haller Lazar Haller Abram Klinger Hermann Morris Herschel Morris or Herschel Morks Miriam Morris

Pola Morris Alex Rosen David Rosen Fanka Silberman Moses Steiner Henry Weinbaum Joseph Weiss Marian Wilner

and Roman Haller , who was born on May 10, 1944 in Tarnopol (now in Ukraine ).

Quotes

“I've never asked myself: should I do it? Always: How do I do it? Every step of my childhood had brought me to this fork in the road: I have to go the right way or I would no longer be myself! "

- Irene Gut Opdyke : In My Hands, 126

“In many ways, my mother's story sounds too incredible, even for Hollywood. What was it about Irene Gut Opdyke that made her step out of the path of least resistance and decide to act? When so many didn't. Was it her upbringing? Your belief? What gave her the courage and strength to do what she did? As their only child, I was asked this question over and over for many years. My mother never sat down with me and explained all of her motivations to me ... But all these questions were answered: with her words and her actions, with her daily life. My mother lived the two most important commandments: to love God with all your heart and to love your neighbor as yourself. The short, simple answer is: Believe, forgive and love! "

- Jeannie Opdyke Smith : from her website, accessed July 2015

Book publications

• Into the Flames , The Life Story of a Righteous Gentile. Borgo Press; Reprint June 1992. (Studies in Judaica & the Holocaust # 8) ISBN 978-0893704759
• In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer , with Jennifer Armstrong
  • Random House (Knopf), 1999. ISBN 0-679-89181-1
    • Paperback: Anchor, 2001. ISBN 0385720327
    • Paperback: Bantam Doubleday Dell, April 17, 2001
    • Paperback: Laurel Leaf Library, Sept. 14, 2004
    • Paperback: Corgi Childrens, July 2009. ISBN 978-0552561235
    • Kindle Edition, October 31, 2010
  • German: Who saves a life ...: a true story from the Holocaust , from the American. by Barbara Radke. Zurich and Munich: Diana Verlag 2000. ISBN 3-8284-5034-2
    • Augsburg: Weltbild 2001 (approved licensed edition, unabridged edition) ISBN 3-8289-6987-9
  • French: Mémoires dune just , Éd. France Loisirs 2003. ISBN 978-2744167881
  • Turkish: Ellerimde , Say Yayinlari 2009. ISBN 978-9754687927
  • Polish: Ratowałam od zagłady , Znak 2010. ISBN 978-8324013456
  • Hungarian: Két kezemmel: a holocaust túlélőinek és megmentőjüknek emlékére , hardcover, Trivium Kiado 2001. ISBN 963-7570-97-7

Awards

• 1982: Righteous Among the Nations
• 2002: ALA Best Books for Young Adults , awarded by the American Library Association
• 2009: Courage to Care Award of the Anti Defamation League posthumously

See also

• Witold Pilecki
• Savior of Jews

Individual evidence

1. ↑ There are also a number of sources that state 1918 as the year of birth. Her own statement in her book In My Hands was chosen .
2. ↑ Different information.
3. ↑ Quoted from the ABC broadcast Prime Time , date unknown, accessed on July 2 from the Irene Opdyke website
4. ↑ Rügemer was also posthumously recognized as Righteous Among the Nations in 2014 , cf. Jerusalem Israel News: Eduard Rügemer is Righteous Among the Nations ( Memento of the original from July 5, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed July 2, 2015 
5. ↑ Joyce Jensen: In her hands , International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation , accessed July 2, 2015
6. ↑ SMH: Nazi officer's mistress risked her life to save Jews , accessed July 3, 2015
7. ^ Adam Bernstein: Wrote of aiding Jews in World War II , The Washington Post , May 21, 2003, B06, quoted here from a copy of the Canadian Foundation of Polish-Jewish Heritage
8. ↑ Irene Gut Opdyke on the website of Yad Vashem (English)
9. ↑ This title may have been published for the first time earlier, as Amazon added the note Reprint to the book description .
10. ↑ Lori Haycox: Pope recognizes Yorba Linda woman's WWII sacrifice , The Orange County Register , June 10, 1995
11. ↑ Jennifer Armstrong ( Memento of the original from July 1, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed July 4, 2015 
12. ↑ Random House: In My Hands: Memoires of a Holocaust Rescuer , publisher's announcement, accessed on July 4, 2015
13. ↑ The book was rated by 279 readers on Amazon, 87% gave it five stars, 10% four stars. See Amazon Customer Reviews , accessed on July 4, 2015. On the UK Amazon site, approval is even clearer: 24 out of 26 reviewers gave five stars, two gave four stars.
14. ↑ In 1998 there was a legal dispute over the copyrights of her life story, which is difficult to understand from a European point of view. The dispute was ultimately settled through an agreement. For more information, see the English version of this article, cf. en or Holocaust Heroine Is Satisfied With Accord. In: Los Angeles Times , April 12, 2000
15. ↑ Andrew Gans: Gordon's Irena's Vow Ends Off-Broadway Run Nov. 25 , Playbill , November 25, 2008
16. ^ Richard Zoglin: What''s Wrong with this Spring's Broadway Plays , TIME , April 6, 2009
17. ↑ Gordon Cox:Irena's Vow to close: Broadway play was struggling to find audience , Variety , June 25, 2009
18. ↑ Andrew Gans: "Irena's Vow" to Close on Broadway June 28 ( Memento of the original from September 7, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The  archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Playbill, June 16, 2009
19. ↑ YouTube: Mała little Flower by Katy Carr, accessed on July 25, 2015
20. ^ Trójka: Katy Carr - Mała Little Flower , September 26, 2012
21. ↑ Independent Music Awards: Katy Carr , accessed July 25, 2015
22. ↑ Awards and Winners 2014 , accessed July 25, 2015

Web links

• Irene Gut Opdyke at Forgotten Holocaust
• The Times , obituary (fee required)
• 2001 Interview at achuka.co.uk
• Irena's Vow review
• You Tube , Herschel Morks and Roman Haller meet Irene Gut Opdyke, who saved her life and that of a number of her family members, accessed on July 1, 2015
• Literature by and about Irene Gut Opdyke in the catalog of the German National Library