In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer
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Product Description
Read by Hope Davis
7 hours 6 minutes, 4 cassettes
“You must know that I did not become a resistance fighter, a smuggler of Jews, a defier of the SS and the Nazis all at once. One’s first steps are permanently tiny: I had begun by hiding food under a fence.”
Through this intimate and compelling memoir, we are witness to the growth of a hero. Irene Gut was just a girl when the war started: seventeen, a Polish patriot, a student nurse, a excellent Catholic girl. As the war progressed, the soldiers of two countries stripped her of all she loved—her family tree, her home, her innocence—but the degradations only strengthened her will.
She started to fight back. Irene was forced to work for the German army, but her blond hair, her blue eyes, and her youth bought her the relatively safe job of waitress in an officer’s dining room. She would use this Aryan mask as both a shield and a sword: She selected up snatches of conversation along with the Nazis’ dirty dishes and passed the information to Jews in the ghetto. She raided the German Warenhaus for food and blankets. She smuggled people fron the work camp into the forest. And, when she was made the housekeeper of a Nazi major, she successfully hid twelve Jews in the basement of his home until the Germans’ defeat.
This young woman was determined to deliver her friends from evil. It was as simple and as impossible as that.Amazon.com Review
When World War II started, Irene Gutowna was a 17-year-ancient Polish nursing student. Six years later, she writes in this inspiring memoir, “I felt a million years ancient.” In the intervening time she was separated from her family tree, raped by Russian soldiers, and forced to work in a hotel serving German officers. Sickened by the suffering inflicted on the local Jews, Irene started 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 learned them in the house, Gutowna became his mistress to protect her friends–later escaping him to join the Polish partisans during the Germans’ refuge. The leader presents her extraordinary heroism as the inevitable result of tiny steps taken over time, but her readers will not agree as they consume this thrilling adventure tale, 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
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In reading my class did a unit on the holocaust. The teacher told us that we each had to read our choice of a holocaust book and this is the book i selected. This book is about a girl named Irene. She lived in a jewish family tree that was as normal as any additional family tree. Until one day when the Germans invaded Poland. Irene was the only one in her family tree that would pass for a german. She was taking a nursing class and she had recently starte helping out in a hospital. Well, one night when she was at the hospital, planes ongoing flying over and dropping bombs everywhere! When she was running around the hospital trying to help everybody, a doctor grabbed her and they left the hospital. He said that she could come with him, but when a bomb dropped she ran for her life and didn’t reflect about what he said. Irene was the walking through the forest in the winteer with the german army following her! When the germans caught up to her they beat her up. She was left there in the snow unconscious. When the doctor was walking through the woods he establish her laying there and he took her in. He sent her on a train to his sisters house so that she could live there and help her treat the wounded soldiers that came in for treatment. Finally one day Irene couldn’t satnd not being able to know if her family tree was alright, and so she chose to take a plane back to Poland to see her family tree. Since she could pass for a German she had no problem getting into the country. When she establish out that her parents weren’t to be establish, she finished up staying with a Major Rugemur. There she establish out how dreadful the jews were really being treated in concentration camps. Everyday she tried to sneak them food, and she knew that the punishment for helping a jew was death. In the Majors house there was a baseent and an attic. That is where she tried to hide all of her Jewish Friends. She hid some of them in the woods though. One day the major establish out anout this and he was very upset, although the major said they could stay if she would give him something in return and she agreed. What happens at the end of the book is what you’ll have to find out, and i fervently suggest you to read this book!
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
Not to undermine the accomplishments and bravery of Ms. Gut, but I establish the tone of her memoir a small self-congratulatory in places, yet delivered in a “What, small ancient me, a hero?” voice that didn’t feel authentic.
I am certainly a cynic, but the tale didn’t read as though Ms. Gut felt simply compelled to share it, rather, I felt as though she is searching for recognition for all that she has done. She certainly deserves it, but that kind of gratitude shouldn’t have to be questioned for.
I haven’t read many holocaust narratives, and it may be that I am more familiar with tales by the “rescued” than the “rescuer” perspective, but I feel sure that there must be additional tales that are equally vital, yet more elegantly written.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
This is a right account by an Austrian child psychologist who helped to secure a safe environment for some of the multitudes of children during Hitler’s Holocaust. In 1939, a group of Polish and Russian doctors had bought some French castles to use as combined school and orphanage. Called OSE (Organization of Scientists and Educators), they attempted to save these young children of the parents in concentration camps. It is the tale of survival, not of all; persons who did survive bring to mind the tale of the Von Trapp family tree as depicted in the movie, ‘The Sound of Composition,” but multiplied many-fold.
Dr. Papanek was chosen to be the director of these children’s homes where he used his progressive education theories he had instituted in his homeland. His goal was to get as many children as possible to safety “whole.” He was a fantastic innovator in education. When he went back in 1956, after escaping to America, he establish “too many memories, too many ghosts.” He was sad that more of the group didn’t survive to tell the tale of Villa Les Tourelles. In its place, there was an apartment house with a park in the rear. They located the right spot as the tower of might at the entrance still read, Les Tourelles, The House of the Children. He establish it to be ‘deja vu’ combined with you-can’t-go-home-again. A plaque in the park was inscribed “Dedidated to the Children of Soisy — Heroes of the Resistance.” He questioned a group of children if they knew what the marker symbolized, “It is becaues of the courageous children of Tourelles who lived here through the bombs.”
Ernst Papanek died on August 5, 1973, at his home in Vermont, still bitter at U. S. A. for not allowing a massive invasion of all the children in his homes. In America, he had been director of a school for girls, then a school for boys. These were problem children and he experimented with his psychiatric milieu therapy to reeducate our juvenile delinquents. As a replacement for of finding peace and forgetfulness for the war years, he had a new mission to rescue our children from themselves. He brought to America what he could not end in France. Not many martyrs would have laid down their lives to save additional people’s children. I just marvel why so many of the survivors came to American shores to settle if it was such a terrible place. They could have chosen South America, and yet most chose North America and had secure, safe surroundings among caring people.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
I loved this book very much. It gave me a better understanding of what the Holocaust was really all about. I couldn’t judge some of the scenes that she described about what was happeing to the Jews. The courage of what Irene did to protect people that she didnt even know amazed me. She never gave up on herself and believed that one person could make a difference. I was touched by the way Germans could treat such innocent people and was amazed at the scenes that she described in the book. Irene knew what she was doing was right and the more she saw such behavior the more determined she became to fight. One of the things I did not like about this book was that they all ears more on what was happening to her and the people she was protecting then all the Jews in all-purpose and what was really happening in the concentration camps. Also it was hard trying to follow up on what was happing in the war. I got confused on when they were being helped out by additional forces or when Germany was in perfect power. I also wanted to hear more about Hitler and the evil that he aroused. Over all I believed this was a very excellent book to others interested in the Holocaust.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
Tiffany from MMS
I read a book called “In My Hands” The leader of it is a lady by the name of Irene Gut Opdyke. “In My Hands” is one of my favorite books about the Holocaust. “In My Hands” has a fantastic vocabulary, and it describes everything that happened in the holocaust so well. I showed it to the people in my family tree they said that it looks like a fun book to read! They said that the take in really caches the eye. The book is about a teenage girl named Irene, which is Jew. And being a 17 year ancient blonde with blue eyes, she get a job as a waitress for one of the sergeants. She starts of small by slowly feeding the people in the gettos left over food. Then she risks being killed by helping a small of the Jews out of the gettos. This is a wonderful book about the Holocaust. It will help you see the Holocaust the ways that the Jews saw it. I would recommend this fantastic book to anyone. It has a small something in it, for everybody.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5