Customer Reviews

In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer

5 star:		(105)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Engrossing! I read this book in one sitting, because I could not bear to put it down. I'm not easily moved, but Ms. Opdyke's story of life as a young woman in Nazi occupied Poland moved me. I don't easily cry, but I shamelessly cried several times while reading this book.

This is an inspiring tale of courage and resistence in the face of unambiguous evil. It is also the hope-filled story of grace found among the most surprising of individuals: two Soviet physicians consipring to help a young prisoner of war to escape; a Wehrmacht Officer's Club manager blithely feeding slave laborers with luxuries intended for the "master race;" a simple Ukranian priest openly preaching resistence; a Nazi officer sheltering Jews in the basement of his villa!

Above all, this is a story of choices: a story of ordinary people immersed in a living hell, who chose to keep faith with each other, their ideals, their country, and their God.

In a time when too many among us seek to avoid responsibility, here we find the story of a young woman who willingly took responsibility for herself and dozens of others. In a time when politicians conveniently twist "values education" to their own advantage, here we find the story of a woman whose religious and ethical heritage repeatedly demanded the best of her, even under the most dangerous of circumstances. Here we find a heroine on the order of Oscar Schindler or Raul Wallenburg. This life-affirming tale demonstrates that even under the most extreme circumstances, one righteous person can still change the world for the better. For that reason alone, this book is worth reading.

If you have been wounded too often, and have become just a little too cynical about the world, read this book. If you enjoy a thrilling adventure story, laced with romance, read this book. If you want to inspire a child (especially a girl) to greater moral courage, read this book with her. If you wish to remember that glimmers of light shone through the darkness that engulfed the world from 1939 to 1945, read this book.

Read this book.

I am so grateful for having read this book. It was deeply moving. I am a seventeen year old girl, as Irene was when the war began, and I cannot even imagine having to experience all of things she did....being raped, a mistress, etc. I admire this woman so much, her courage and determination are one in a billion. It's incomprehensible to know what she went through during those dreadful years, yet through it all her faith is what helped her to survive. I will never forget this book for as long as live...I've read so many books, and I have to admit that I think this one has truly moved me the most. I've read many Holocaust stories as well, but this had a profound effect on me. Please read this book--you'll gain not only a better insight of World War II and the Holocaust, but also how to appreciate life more and realize how much you take for granted.

This short book is one of the more remarkable books on the Holocaust I have ever read. It details the life of one seemingly ordinary nursing student, thrown into adversity, who demonstrates extraordinary courage and heroism and humanity responding to the needs of a group of Jewish prisoners in her care. Against extraordinary odds, she manages to harbor the group in the basement of a house occupied by a Wehrmacht officer for whom she serves as housekeeper. The book is an easy read, written in a warm and direct style, very personal, and at the same time very intense. Reading this book helps answer some of the eternal questions about the survival of humanity in Nazi-occupied Europe, and is a must-read for students of the subject.

This quote begins Irene Gut Opdyke's tale of heroism and courage. The quote comes from the local minister after he learned the story of the family dog saving a young Irene from falling into the river. The priest's proclamation could not have come more true.

As a young adult in Poland, Irene's childhood ended with the Nazi invasion. Relocated from her family for her nursing skill, Irene was well traveled by the war's end. In the most unlikley of circumstances, Irene found herself as the housekeeper of a German officer. Just before this promotion, she had begun illegally sending food to the Jewish ghetto. So while working in the German officer's house, she took a bolder step. She hid several Jews in the cellar of the house. If she was caught, her execution would have been certain. She sacrificed dignity and humiliation in order to preserve the lives of those she protected. In a twist of fate, it was many of the same Jews that she helped survive the war that helped her to settle after the war.

It is often forgotten that many Germans and Europeans did not support the Nazis. With this in mind, many Christians were hiding Jews and helping them to survive until the fall of the Nazi regime. Because my own grandmother kept several Jews on her farm during the war in Poland, this book struck a personal chord in me. This is a side of the Holocaust and World War II that is not often told. For her bravery and her book, I commend Irene Gut Opdyke. Her story is so good, it is almost beyond belief.

I have to say that I came upon this book by accident. I am an avid reader of WWII. I was completely impressed by the life of Irene. I could not put this book down and when I was done it made me yearn for more. The reason for the 4 star review, is that I felt that the book rushed to an ending and could have elaborated more on her partisan days. I could have read another 300 pages. This story had to be told and should be used as a teaching tool in all highschools. I would love to have a sequel to this compelling book. To the author, please bring us more of this lady's fascinating life. These stories must never be forgotten.

Although Poland was a fiercely anti-Semitic country, the nation which lost the highest percentage of its prewar Jewish population, and the nation where at least half of the murdered were from, ironically the largest number of people recognised by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations also came from Poland. Irena Gutowna (Irene Gut) is one of those people. The foundations for her heroic actions were laid in her childhood, when she and her four younger sisters would often rescue injured or abandoned animals and tend them back to life and health, as well as frequently showing kindness to less fortunate people as well. She was very angry and resentful that her beloved homeland of Poland had to suffer so much under the hands of both the Nazis and the Soviets, and knew she had to do all she could to fight both forces. At both the beginning and the end of the war, she fought with the Polish partisans in the woods; both times her partisan activities were brought to a grinding halt when she was captured and arrested by the Soviets, but both times she also managed to escape. After her first escape, she was found by other Russians and taken in her unconscious bruised and battered state to a nearby hospital in what is now the Ukraine, and after her recovery she was put to work as a nurse, having been a student nurse before the war. After escaping there when the new head doctor tried to attack her, she worked in a small Soviet village for a year, posing as the cousin of a female doctor and being her assistant, before she was able to go back home to Poland, eventually ending up in Ternopol, the city she had been in before she'd escaped the hospital where she was also a prisoner. After this she began to see more and more signs of anti-Semitism and cruelty around her, and knew these things to be wrong and that she couldn't live with herself if she didn't do something to help. It began in small gestures, like hiding food under a fence daily, and eventually culminated in smuggling people to the forest and hiding them in the villa where she was housekeeper to a Nazi Major, whom she had also served in a nearby hotel. She was able to use her high-ranking position to get away with hiding people and smuggling them food, knowing no one would ever suspect her.

It's a nice change of perspective to read a memoir from the pov of a rescuer as opposed to a survivor; both suffered and took risks in different ways. Irena knew what the penalty was for helping Jews but continued to risk her life doing so anyway, even eventually having to become the mistress of the Major for whom she kept house so he would keep her secret, despite how much shame and humiliation that brought this good Catholic girl who had never even had a boyfriend before the war (she had already been raped by the Russians who captured her). A lot of people also don't know the suffering the Polish people had to go through as well during WWII; they weren't herded into ghettoes and camps, but a lot of them had to go through starvation, fear, terror, and labor camps as well.

Set in the howling abyss of the Holocaust, Irene Gut Opdyke's stirring memoir, "In My Hands," serves as a beacon of light when the world's moral compass pointed to darkness. When the history of the twentieth century is fully comprehended, I have little doubt that this remarkable woman will emerge as one of the most signficant models of honor, decency, morality and personal responsibility. Ripped from her family and her own personal innocence, Irene Gut never flinched from her private outrage over the evil of genocide; instead, despite the most profound personal outrages committed against her (cruelties which would cause most of us to withdraw from social contact and the ability to feel tenderness), Irene elected to become a savior, personally shouldering the enormous responsibility of hiding Jews, the intended victims of Nazi brutality.

Told in a quiet, unassuming voice, "In My Hands" chronicles Irene's "lilac time," a near idyllic childhood spent in the embrace of a loving, supportive family. World War II shattered not only her family's coherence, but it irrevocably altered Irene's perception of humanity. Never wavering in her astounding faith, Irene refused fatalism as a personal philosophy. Recovering from the most brutal sexual assault imaginable, Irene observes Nazi depradations against Polish Jewry and resolves to stand against it.

Her defiance began, as she reminds us, with "small steps." Smuggling food through a fence into a ghetto evolves into secreting Jews in a forest. This action emboldens Irene to risk both personal autonomy and safety into actually hiding twelve Jews in the basement of a German major's villa. Never seeking praise or affirmation for her work, cut off from both friends and family, Irene Gut operated in a moral universe solely of her own doing. Her moral code, "I must take the right path, or I would no longer be myself," stands as an affirmation of what it means to be human -- even more crucial to the understanding of this noble human being is that so few, so very few people adopted her tenacious will to assist the brutalized.

Capably assisted by the children's author Jennifer Armstrong, Irene Gut Opdyke reaches the widest audience with "In My Hands." Recognized by Israel as one of the "Righteous Among the Nations" and honored by our United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as a permanent contributor to the study of the Holocaust, Irene Gut Opdyke stands as a moral model. Her wrenching but deeply instructive memoir tells much more than a life's story; it educates our heart and inspires moral vision.

Reading this Holocaust book made me feel, more than see. The description was that good. Vividly described events and scenes drew me in and made me interact with it. The feelings coursed through the book but could only be felt, not seen. The lead, with its great writing, intrigued me. An excerpt from the book, it was a prologue that captivated my attention. Dangerous situations and my hope for the best kept me turning the pages. Irene's courage lit up the situations. The scary part was it was all true. I would recommend this five star book to persons of age 16 and older and anybody interested in historical accounts. I feel that there are some events in the auto-biography that happened to Irene that may shock younger readers. If you do want your younger child to read this true story, please read it to them, editing out parts as you go. However, without the full story, I don't think that it can be felt. Younger children might be frightened by the all-to-realistic war scenes and shocked at some other events. It might be too slow-paced for their attention span and they won't understand her motives. I believe that teenagers who know, or knew, someone who lived through the Holocaust would find this extremly informative and helpful, especially if that person won't, or wouldn't, talk about it, which I don't blame them for. Lastly, the shock value of the war won't surprise as many teenagers as it will little kids. Overall, I enjoyed this book, not the things that happened to the victims, but how it made me experience and live through the Holocaust, though my experience can never come close to the pain, emotionally and physically, the victims, and survivors, felt.

I guess I didn't realize that this book was written for the younger audience. I picked it up because it sounded like an interesting story and I wanted to hear a personal account of the Nazi treatment of Jews during WWII.

This book had me completely enveloped in its story. I could not put it down because I wanted to know what would happen next. The story is about a Polish girl and her experiences during WWII. Although she was not a Jew, she witnessed firsthand the horrors of what happened to them. She saw that they were rounded up and baricaded into the ghettos. She could have looked the other way or closed her eyes to the nightmares, but she decided to help some Jews that she met. You won't believe what she did to try to save them.

Reading the story from someone who was there really made it real to me. I couldn't put the book down and found myself reading it over lunch at work. There were times I had to put it away because it was just overwhelming. And there were times that I wept with the author over the horrible things that happened.

This is a such a moving book. I highly recommend it to others who want to hear a first-hand account of what it was really like in Poland during the time of the German Nazis. I think I like this book better than the Diary of Anne Frank, although both are good.

I have read World War Two novels before. I have read intense novels before. I don't know if any of them compare with this one. This is one of those novels that is so real it gives you goosebumps both while and after you read it. Given in a first person narrative, Irene Gut Opdyke's story is so amazing you would swear it is the work of a popular fiction author, but having the knowledge that it is absolutely 100% true gives it a sharp edge that no fiction novel can attempt. Showing the type of courage and self-sacrifices anybody could only hope to have in such circumstances, Irene unwittingly made herself into a true hero for all people, young and old. Love for your fellow man will triumph over all.