Irene Gut Opdyke
Front cover of In My Hands. Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer by Opdyke, ISBN 0385720327
Born
Irena Gut

(1922-05-05)5 May 1922
Kozienice, Poland
Died17 May 2003(2003-05-17) (aged 81)
Fullerton, California, US
Citizenship
  • Poland
  • United States[1]
OccupationNurse
SpouseWilliam Opdyke
HonoursRighteous Among the Nations
Maple tree in memory of Irena Gut Opdyke, Righteous Among the Nations, in Piekary Śląskie, in Poland.

Irene Gut Opdyke (born Irena Gut, 5 May 1922 – 17 May 2003) was a Polish nurse who gained international recognition for aiding Polish Jews persecuted by Nazi Germany during World War II. She was honored as a Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem for risking her life to save twelve Jews.

Life

Irena Gut was born into a Catholic family, in Kozienice, Poland, during the interwar period; she was one of five daughters. The family moved to Radom, where she enrolled at the nursing school before the Nazi-Soviet invasion of 1939. In 1942, at the age of 19, Gut witnessed a German soldier kill an infant;[2] this event transformed her life. During the German occupation, Gut was hired by Wehrmacht Major Eduard Rügemer to work in a kitchen of a hotel that frequently served Nazi officials.[3] Inspired by her religious faith, Gut secretly took food from the hotel and delivered it to the Tarnopol Ghetto.[4]

Gut smuggled Jews out of the ghetto into the surrounding forest and delivered food for them there. Meanwhile, Rügemer asked Gut to work as a housekeeper in his requisitioned villa. She hid 12 Jews in the cellar.[5] They would come out and help her clean the house when he was not around. Rügemer found out about the Jews she was hiding. At risk to all their lives, Rügemer kept Gut's secret, on the condition that she became his mistress.[6] Rügemer fled with the Germans in 1944 ahead of the Russian advance. Gut and several Jews also fled west from Soviet occupied Poland to Allied-occupied Germany. She was put in a Displaced Persons camp, where she met William Opdyke, a United Nations worker from New York City. She emigrated to the United States and married Opdyke shortly thereafter. They raised a family together.[4]

Recognition

After years of silence regarding her wartime experience, in 1975 Opdyke was convinced to speak after hearing a neo-Nazi claim that the Holocaust never occurred.[7] Opdyke began a public speaking career which culminated in her memoir In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer.[7] In 1982, she was recognized and honored by Yad Vashem as one of the Polish Righteous Among the Nations.[8] In 2012, Eduard Rügemer was recognized and honored by Yad Vashem as one of the German Righteous Among the Nations.[9]

Synagogue service and papal blessing

On 9 June 1995, Opdyke was honored with a papal blessing from Pope John Paul II at a joint service of Jews and Catholics held at Shir Ha-Ma'alot synagogue in Irvine, California, along with an invitation from Pope John Paul II for her to have an audience with him. The papal blessing and audience with the Pope had been obtained for her by congregant Alan Boinus with the help of Monsignor Joseph Karp of the John Paul II Polish Center Catholic church in Yorba Linda, California. The papal blessing was the first recognition by the Catholic Church of her efforts during the Holocaust. Opdyke said, "This is the greatest gift I can receive for whatever I did in my life."[10]

ABC Primetime Live trip to Israel

In July 1997, Opdyke traveled to Israel with her manager, Alan Boinus, and his wife, publicist Rosalie Boinus, for a television story arranged by the Boinuses for ABC Primetime Live, which aired on 10 June 1998 and re-united Opdyke with Hermann Morks, one of the twelve Jews whose lives she saved.[11][12]

On the trip, Alan Boinus arranged for private meetings with Opdyke at the Knesset with former President and Prime Minister of Israel Shimon Peres and Speaker of the Knesset Dan Tichon. Boinus also arranged for other meetings in Israel for Opdyke with Mordecai Paldiel, Director of the Department of the Righteous Among the Nations at Yad Vashem, and with Holocaust survivor Roman Haller: Roman was the baby Opdyke saved during the war by convincing his parents, Ida and Lazar Haller—two of the twelve Jews that Gut had hidden in Rügemer's cellar—that Ida should carry the child to term after she became pregnant while hiding in the cellar. After the war, when a returning Rügemer was rejected by his wife and children in Nuremberg for being party to saving Jews, the Hallers took him into their own home in Munich.[13] Rügemer became Zeide ('grandfather') to Roman Haller. Haller went on to serve as director of the German office of the Claims Conference, which represents world Jewry in negotiating restitution for the victims of Nazi persecution.[14]

Legacy

Memoir

Opdyke's memoir, In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer,[15] was arranged by her then-manager Alan Boinus and published in 1999 through Random House, with co-author Jennifer Armstrong. Alan Boinus and his wife, Rosalie Boinus, among others, are thanked by Opdyke in the acknowledgements.[16]

Irene Gut Opdyke Holocaust Rescuer Foundation

The Irene Gut Opdyke Holocaust Rescuer Foundation was founded in 1997 by Alan and Rosalie Boinus in honor of Opdyke to offer awards, grants, and scholarships to young people inspired by the heroic acts of Irene Gut Opdyke when she was young, so they may likewise stand up to racism, bigotry, and hate.[17] It has since been disbanded.

Play

A play based on the book In My Hands, Irena's Vow, opened on Broadway on 29 March 2009 to mixed reviews.[18] It was written by Dan Gordon and starred Tovah Feldshuh as Irena Gut.[19] It had earlier premiered off-Broadway at the Baruch Performing Arts Center in New York City. After failing to find an audience, the play closed on 28 June 2009.[19][20]

Irena's Vow, a film adaptation of the play, is slated to premiere in 2023 with Sophie Nélisse in the lead role.[21]

In 1998, Opdyke's story was the subject of legal action and cross-complaint when she sought to regain the motion picture rights to her life story, which she had previously assigned in an option agreement. Copyright attorney Carole Handler represented Opdyke and worked with the parties to reach an agreement. The case was dismissed with prejudice.[22]

Song

In 2012, Katy Carr, a British songwriter with Polish roots, released a song inspired by Opdyke titled "Mała Little Flower"[23] on her album Paszport. On 26 September 2012, Trojka Radio in Poland nominated it as a song of the week.[24]

Works

  • With coauthor: Armstrong, Jennifer (1999). In my hands: Memories of a Holocaust rescuer (1st ed.). New York: Knopf. ISBN 9780679891819.
  • With coauthor: Elliot, Jeffrey M. (September 1992). Into the Flames: Life Story of a Righteous Gentile. Borgo Press. ISBN 978-0-89370-475-9.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Anton, Mike (21 May 2003). "Irene Opdyke, 85; Hid Jews in Poland During the Holocaust". Los Angeles Times. After the war, Opdyke immigrated to the United States, where she became a citizen ...
  2. ↑ Atwood 2011, p. 37.
  3. ↑ Atwood 2011, p. 36.
  4. 1 2 Joyce Jensen, In Her Hands by Irene Opdyke, International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation.
  5. ↑ Atwood 2011, p. 39.
  6. ↑ Opdyke, Irene Gut; Armstrong, Jennifer (April 2001). In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer. New York: Anchor Books, a division of Random House. p. 190. ISBN 9780385720328.
  7. 1 2 Atwood 2011, p. 41.
  8. ↑ Holocaust Memorial Center, 1988 – 2007, Opdyke, Irene; Righteous Gentile
  9. ↑ "Righteous Among the Nations Honored by Yad Vashem by 1 January 2022 – Germany" (PDF). Yad Vashem.
  10. ↑ "Pope recognizes Yorba Linda woman's WWII sacrifice", Lori Haycox, The Orange County Register, 10 June 1995.
  11. ↑ "Irene Gut Opdyke interview". www.achuka.co.uk.
  12. ↑ ABC Primetime Live air date June 10, 1998
  13. ↑ Schapiro, Rich (28 January 2022). "A Nazi officer's housekeeper hid 12 Jews in the basement. All of them made it out alive". NBC News.
  14. ↑ Snyder, Donald (3 September 2009). "Roman Haller and his zeide: How a Jewish couple took in the Wehrmacht officer who hid them". The Jerusalem Post.
  15. ↑ Opdyke & Armstrong 1999.
  16. ↑
  17. ↑ "Holocaust Rescuer Says She Was 'Predestined'". Los Angeles Times. 9 June 1998. Archived from the original on 28 September 2016.
  18. ↑ "What's Wrong with this Spring's Broadway Plays", Richard Zoglin, TIME, 6 April 2009.
  19. 1 2 "Irena's Vow". Archived from the original on 23 July 2012. Retrieved 18 February 2014.. Retrieved 18 February 2014.
  20. ↑ "Irena's Vow to close: Broadway play was struggling to find audience", Gordon Cox, Variety, 25 June 2009.
  21. ↑ Jeremy Kay, "Sophie Nélisse, Dougray Scott to star in Quiver’s wartime drama ‘Irena’s Vow’, as WestEnd launches sales". Screen Daily, May 9, 2022.
  22. ↑ Holocaust Heroine Is Satisfied With Accord, Los Angeles Times, 12 April 2000.
  23. ↑ Official music video for Mała little Flower by Katy Carr. YouTube. 29 December 2012. Archived from the original on 14 December 2021. Retrieved 2 September 2015.
  24. ↑ "Katy Carr – Mała Little Flower". PolskieRadio.pl. Retrieved 2 September 2015.

Sources

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