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49 pages 1 hour read

Irene Gut Opdyke, Jennifer Armstrong

In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1992

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Chapters 13-18Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 13 Summary: “Only a Girl”

By August 1942, Irena and Janina are in Ternopol, still performing domestic duties for the German officers. In addition to working in the kitchen, Irena is put in charge of the laundry facility, which is staffed by Jewish workers from the local work camp. Irena oversees twelve Jewish men and women, all of whom had once been “individuals of means” (120)—medical students, lawyers, nurses. These workers tell Irena about their mistreatment in the camp, and she promises to “look after” them, bringing them food when she can (121). One worker doubts she will be able to do much—after all, she is “only a young girl” (121)—but she soon finds her status as “only a girl” allows her to accomplish quite a bit.

Irena meets Sturmbannführer Rokita, the SS commander who mistreats her workers, and is surprised to discover he’s a strikingly handsome young man—and he finds her to be a “pretty girl” as well (122). She feels sure that Rokita has a “heart of ice” (122), and she decides that she will “try to thwart him” (123). She begins by asking if she can have more workers to help her and her sister out, and she is given ten new workers who will be better off with her than in the factory or work camp. In addition, she begins to eavesdrop while serving the German officers at mealtime—the Germans do not consider her a threat, as she is “only a girl” (124). Allowing Rokita to think she is “awed by his beauty and his power” (125), Irena finds she is able to get closer and closer to the enemy she hopes to foil.

Chapter 14 Summary: “Stealing from Rokita”

Irena continues eavesdropping on Rokita, so she can warn the Jews when an Aktion will occur, with Aktion being a raid when “the ‘excess’ population of the ghetto was removed” and never heard from again (126). One of her workers, Fanka Silberman, disappears in such a raid, and Irena is determined to find her. She makes up a story that Fanka took some dresses to the ghetto to mend them, and she gains permission to visit the ghetto and get the dresses back. She finds Fanka, who tells her that her family was taken away while she hid in the basement. Rokita has stolen Fanka’s family, but as Irena says, “he did not steal Fanka,” and “I swore he never would” (131).

Chapter 15 Summary: “Falling from My Hands”

As autumn arrives and the weather turns cold, Irena asks Schulz for blankets, which she intends to use to make warmer clothes for the Jewish workers. Schulz tells her that if she needs anything, she shouldn’t be afraid to ask, and she realizes Schulz knows Irena is helping the Jews. As December begins, Irena is consumed with preparations for an elaborate Christmas Eve party. Janina and Irena attend the party as servants, and to Irena’s dismay, Rokita ogles Janina, the younger sister Irena is constantly trying to protect.

As the party continues, Rokita’s date, a local girl named Natasha, sees that Jews are working in the kitchen, and she runs off to tell Rokita. Irena’s worker Roman reveals that he and Natasha were friends before the war, and Natasha wanted a more intimate relationship and became very jealous. The next day, Irena learns that Roman and his wife, Sozia, have been taken away, turning this sacred Christmas day into “a lie” (138). Meanwhile, Rokita keeps asking about Janina, so Irena has Janina sent back to Radom to evade the officer’s clutches. As 1943 begins, Irena realizes that “my last link with my family was gone” (140).

Chapter 16 Summary: “Puszcza Janówa”

Irena’s friend Helen Weinbaum has moved to a farm outside Ternopol, and her husband, Henry, is working as Rokita’s valet. Meanwhile, Irena has become aware that the German forces are not doing well on the eastern front, refusing to retreat but unable to advance. At the same time, by spring 1943, Aktions against Jews are increasing, and some of Irena’s workers ask for her help in escaping to live in the forest. Irena realizes she has reached a “crossroad” and “must take the right path” by helping her workers, even though doing so could get her killed, or “I would no longer be myself” (142).

On a morning in late May, Irena takes off work. The Morris brothers and their wives have hidden by the roadside overnight, and Helen arrives with a wagon from her farm. Irena drives the wagon toward the village of Janówka with the Jews hiding in the back. She makes it into the forest, and the Morrisses leave the wagon, having arrived at “our new home” (145). Having completed her task safely, on the next Sunday, Irena takes two more of her laundry workers to the same spot. On the way back, she stops at a church and hears the priest subtly encouraging the parishioners to help the many Jews hiding in the nearby forest. The priest introduces himself as Father Joseph. Feeling a connection with this man, Irena finds herself sharing the horrors she has experienced throughout the war, and as she leaves, Father Joseph asks her to visit him again.

Chapter 17 Summary: “The Blows of the Ax”

By June, Irena has taken six Jews to the forest and delivers food to them when she can. The German officers seem too busy to notice her frequent journeys, especially since they are losing many of their workers as more Jews are removed in Aktions. To her horror, Irena overhears Rokita say that Hitler plans to exterminate all the Jews by July, followed by the Poles—except for “the Aryan types, like Irene,” as “[the Nazis will] make good Germans out of them” (152). Realizing that her Jewish friends have less than a month to live, Irena drops a tray of dishes and says—referring to much more than the dishes—“I have to take care of this…It’s all up to me” (153).

Major Rügemer decides to take a villa in town, and he asks Irena to be his housekeeper. She worries about how she will protect her friends if she is isolated in a villa, but she feels she has no choice but to agree. When she visits the villa, she realizes there is a large basement where several people could live, and a new plan begins to form.

Chapter 18 Summary: “The Race”

Irena tells the six remaining laundry workers—Ida and Lazar Haller, Clara and Thomas Bauer, Moses Steiner, and Fanka Silberman—about the villa basement and promises to smuggle them all in once the current tenants have moved out in a week or two.

On the fifteenth of July, Rokita announces that by the twenty-second of the month, Ternopol will be “judenrein”—free of all Jews (162). The villa’s previous tenants will not be moving out until the twenty-second, so on the night of the twenty-first, the Jews in the laundry room and Helen’s husband Henry must all hide. The workers secure themselves behind shelves in the laundry room, and Irena hears that the next day, the SS will be coming to search for the many Jews who have gone missing in the past few days. While cleaning Major Rügemer’s suite that evening, she finds an air duct above the toilet and realizes she’ll have to hide her workers there.

Chapters 13-18 Analysis

In Chapter 13, titled “Only a Girl,” Irena begins consciously using her femininity to spy on the Germans and obtain help for her Jewish friends, a tactic that will prove crucial to her ability to save Jewish lives. While she initially asks, “What could I do?” as “only a girl, alone among the enemy” (121), Irena gradually gains confidence and takes bolder action.

As Irena’s status as a young, pretty girl gives her access to resources and information, she also finds her sense of responsibility for her Jewish friends increasing. When some of Irena’s friends ask her to help them escape to the forest, she realizes she has reached a turning point where she must decide if she is willing to take much greater, riskier action than simply bringing food and warnings to the Jews. As Irena says, “every step of my childhood had brought me to this crossroad” (142), and at the age of twenty-one, she is fulfilling the heroic destiny she’s dreamed of. Her sense of duty goes beyond just helping others; it reaches the point of sacrificing herself, and Irena sees herself as a “resistance fighter” (143). After four years spent suffering through the war, she believes she may not make it out alive and hopes only “to foil the Germans as much as I could before I went” (143).

Irena continues to struggle with the idea of religion in these chapters, feeling alternately let down by God’s apparent abandonment of her people, and inspired by the good being done in God’s name. Irena is horrified when two of her German workers are taken away, presumably to their deaths, by Rokita on Christmas day, turning Christmas into “a lie” (138). When Irena tries to pray and “remind myself of the promises that Jesus’ birth had made to the world,” she sees “only Sozia and Roman, falling away” (138).

Horrors like this continue to erode Irena’s faith, and by the time she brings the Jews to safety in the forest, she feels she has “wondered too many times in the last few years if God was watching me at all” (148). However, she still feels drawn to stop at a church on her way home, and she is surprised to hear the priest urging his parish to follow “the righteous path” by helping the “less fortunate” (147)—in this case, the Jews. Irena feels she can at least momentarily “lay my worries and responsibilities in someone else’s lap” (148), finding comfort in both the priest and the God he represents.

Despite her faith in God, however, Irena still takes the ultimate responsibility for saving her friends’ lives. When she overhears Hitler’s plans to exterminate all the Jews, she immediately concludes that she must “take care of this,” and that saving her workers is “all up to me” (153). Irena’s extraordinary sense of duty will drive her actions through the rest of the memoir and require her to make sacrifices she hasn’t yet imagined.

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