In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer

Irena contracts pneumonia, and by the time she recovers in 1945, Hitler has killed himself and Poland is supposedly “free” (247), although the Soviet presence in the country hints at further oppression. Irena decides to look for her family, and on May 5 she turns twenty-three, but feels “a million years old” (248). In Radom, Irena finds her aunt Helen, but Helen doesn’t know where Irena’s parents and sisters have ended up. Irena heads toward Kraków, where many Jews have migrated, and she finds one of her Jewish friends, Fanka. Fanka tells her that most members of their group are in Kraków, and that Ida Haller has delivered her baby safely. Irena thanks God that despite all the “dreadful things” she’s gone through, she “had brought forth this baby” (250), allowing new life and hope to continue.

The Hallers are in Katowice, so Irena heads there next and is on her way to see the baby when Soviet policemen arrest her. She is suspected of being the partisan leader, and the Soviets interrogate her mercilessly for days, but she reveals nothing. Finally, she manages to escape through an open window when she’s ordered to clean the prison. She heads toward the Hallers’ apartment building. Their brother Finix finds her and plans to take her back to Kraków, and Irena begs Ida to help her find her family.

Irena is cared for by survivors of the Jewish ghetto, and she learns from her friends’ inquiries that her father has been killed for failing to step off the sidewalk in deference to two drunken German soldiers, while her mother and sisters have been arrested by Soviet secret police because of their connection to Irena. Horrified that she’s brought danger to her family, Irena eventually hears that they have escaped and are in hiding, and she knows she can’t search for them without bringing them more danger. With nothing left for her in Poland, Irena wonders, “Where could I live without fear?” (258)

Irena’s friends procure her a train ticket to a repatriation camp in Germany, and she arrives at the DP camp in Hessich-Lichtenau, Germany, almost seven years after the war began and her “happy world had ended” (261). She is welcomed as a hero in the camp but soon contracts diphtheria. She recovers and lives in the camp for three years, watching the people around her “coming back to life” as their bodies and spirits begin to heal from the horrors they’ve suffered (262).

In summer 1949, a UN delegate named William Opdyke arrives to interview survivors, and after hearing Irena’s story, he says the US would be honored to accept her as a citizen.

Opdyke ends her memoir with a brief musing that echoes the tone of the Prologue. She says that like a baby bird pushed from its nest, the war forced her “to learn how to fly” (265). Now, as an old woman, the horrors of the war still sometimes echo in her mind, but she works to transform them into hopeful images of birds flying, of “a sparrow soaring” (265). Just as she used her free will to save lives during the war, she is using her free will now to tell and remember her story. She ends by telling readers to “Go with God” (265).

In the Postscript, we learn that shortly after arriving in the US, Irena had a chance encounter with William Opdyke, and a few months later they were married. Irena, now a US citizen, settled in Southern California with her husband and daughter, Janina. Because Poland became part of the Soviet empire, Irena had little contact with her family and Polish friends, although she did learn that her mother died shortly after the war ended.

When Irena learned some U.S. citizens believed the Holocaust was a myth, she became determined to share her story, speaking to various groups and eventually writing In My Hands. In 1984, with the Communist regime disbanded, Irena was finally able to visit Poland and reunite with her sisters at last.