In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer

The next morning, Irena arrives at the villa to find her friends have made it to the basement. Along with them are three strangers, Joseph Weiss, Marian Wilner and Alex Rosen, who came along with Helen’s husband Henry. Soldiers will soon arrive to start painting the villa, so Irena tells all ten refugees they must hide in the attic until the painting is complete.

Major Rügemer arrives and tells her that while he’ll be moving in once the painting and repairs are done, he wants her to move in right away and oversee the renovations. Irena spends the next few days keeping the soldiers away from the attic and smuggling up food. She has told the workers to finish the basement first, so she is soon able to move her friends to the basement, where they set up a warning system. By stepping on a button under a rug in the entry hall, Irena can warn her friends if they need to hide quickly. They also find a tunnel leading from the villa’s furnace to a bunker where the Jews can hide in an emergency. The major’s kitchen is well-stocked by Schulz, to the point that Irena wonders if Schulz is aware of her actions and purposefully helping her. All goes well, until the major moves in.

Irena discovers the major’s plans to move his orderly into the basement, and she desperately begs him not to, even telling him she was raped by Russian soldiers. In tears, she tells the major she “cannot bear to have a young man living here,” as “it brings terrible memories for me,” and the major agrees and says he “wouldn’t dream of making you unhappy” (185). Using her “pretty face” to get what she needs leaves Irena with a bitter taste in her mouth, yet she realizes this is “the one power I had” and that she would be foolish not to use it (185).

Irena falls into a routine, locking the front door of the villa once the major leaves for work and letting her friends live relatively freely, showering, drinking coffee and smoking, listening to war news on the radio. After a month has passed, the major plans to spend a day in Lvov, which means Helen can come visit her husband and Irena can check on her other friends in Janówka. Leaving Helen at the villa, Irena carries food and medical supplies in the wagon to Janówka, where she finds her friends well except for Miriam, who has a cold. Returning home, Irena realizes that the Jewish refugees all have “the comfort of family and friends,” while she herself, separated from her family, “had never felt so alone” (190). Yet despite feeling a “wave” of self-pity (190), she knows there are people depending on her, and she must continue to bear her burden alone.

As the summer progresses, Irena becomes almost “too confident” (192) that she has successfully hidden her friends, and in August SS officers arrive, having received a tip that Jews are hiding in the villa. When they realize the villa belongs to Major Rügemer, they make their search brief and find nothing.

Helen meets with a forester named Zygmunt Pasiewski, whom she’s learned about from her friend Helen. Helen has heard that Pasiewski is sympathetic to the Jews’ cause, and Irena hopes he might help her in case of a future emergency. Pasiewski introduces Irena to his wife, Pani, and children, and they realize that Pasiewski was present the night Irena was first captured during the German invasion. Although she doesn’t remember him, she is “overwhelmed” to have discovered “a link to my past” (198) and continues to visit the Pasiewskis throughout the fall. They become close, but “not close enough to trust other people’s lives to one another” (199), as Irena is not yet ready to entrust him with the secret of the Jewish lives she’s guarding.

As the chapter ends, Irena returns home from a visit with Pasiewski to learn that one of the villa stowaways, Ida Haller, is pregnant.

Everyone is distraught over Ida’s pregnancy, as “what should have been joyful news” (201) will cause great danger during wartime. Ida wants to attempt to end the pregnancy, but Irena insists that they cannot let the Germans take another life.

As winter and snow arrive, so does news that the Russians are advancing, and the Germans make preparations, which include covering the villa’s windows with tarpaper in case of Russian bombers. Irena asks for an extra roll of tarpaper to take to her cousin in the forest, and the major shows up with a horse-drawn sleigh, offering to take Irena to the cousin herself. She worries the major is testing her to see if there really is a cousin, but she has no choice but to agree. They reach Pasiewski’s cottage, and Irena is able to pass him off as her cousin for the major. Irena secretly asks Pasiewski to keep the tarpaper for her, and in November returns to the forest alone. She admits to Pasiewski that the paper is for the Jews she is helping to hide in the forest, and Pasiewski says he already guessed the truth and that “you can rely on me” (206). She brings the tarpaper to the forest refugees, so they can make a roof for their dugout, and discovers that Miriam Morris is very sick. Distraught, Irena takes Miriam back to the villa with her, hoping the woman will survive.

Irena successfully adds Miriam to her “family in the basement” (209) as the weather grows worse outside. It is now November 1943, and the Germans are “prosecuting their terror” (209) with ever greater fervor. One day she witnesses two families with young children, one Jewish and one Polish, hanged in the village square—the Jews for being “enemies of the Reich” (210), and the Poles for hiding them. Irena returns home in shock, and Fanka and Clara come comfort her in the kitchen when the major walks in.

The major is furious, crying that he has been “ruined,” and Irena begs him to punish her but let the Jews escape. The major demands time to think, and Irena smuggles the Jews into the bunker, telling them if she doesn’t return in three days they should escape and head for Janówka. Finally, the major returns home and says he’ll “keep your goddamned secret”—but the price is that she must “willingly” sleep with him (214).

The next morning, Irena wakes in the major’s bed, full of shame, as the major tells her he loves her and “couldn’t let any harm come to you” (215). Irena feels this humiliating situation is “worse than rape” (215), and she can never tell her friends what he’s done.

Irena tells the stowaways in the basement that the major will allow them to stay—he only knows about Fanka and Clara—and she finds a church where she goes to confession. She is shocked when the priest tells her he cannot give her absolution if she continues to act as the major’s mistress, for she is giving up her “immortal soul” for Jews. Though she is shaken by the priest’s words, she “place[s] herself in God’s hands all the same,” for God has saved her life “so many times that I had to believe there was a reason” (217)—that reason being to save her friends’ lives.

Another surprise comes when the major invites Fanka and Clara to come up into the house any time as long as he doesn’t have company. They play piano and sing and dance, leading Irena to feel safe “for the first time in years” (220)—but when Clara and Fanka return to the basement, Irena must return to the major’s bed.

As the weather grows worse, Irena brings Hermann Morris from the forest to join his wife Miriam, who is now much better. Irena receives a letter from Janina and finds her sister is planning to join the rest of their family. Irena’s heart is full of conflicting emotions—anxiety, shame, relief and loneliness—so much so that it makes her “dizzy to name all the feelings that struggled to be foremost in my heart” (221).

As 1944 arrives, the Russians are still advancing, and in February, Rügemer delivers bad news: rumors have reached Berlin that he has a Polish mistress, and he must dismiss her. He is leaving town for a few days, and he wants the Jews gone when he returns.

Irena plans to take the men to the Morris’s forest dugout first, so they can make the dugout larger; later, she will bring the women. She manages to smuggle the men in the major’s sleigh; knowing a pregnant woman can’t survive in the dugout, she asks Pasiewski to hide Ida, which he agrees to do. He has room for one of the other Jewish women to help Ida, and when he invites Irena to stay with him as well, she agrees.

On March 6, 1944, the German personnel are set to retreat from Ternopol, and on the March 5th, Irena leads the women from the villa. Since they look like the many civilians evacuating town as the Russians advance, no one stops them, and they make it to the forest. After saying goodbye, Irena enters Pasiewski’s cottage “almost in a daze,” sure that since the Germans are retreating, her friends are “free. I had brought them out alive” (229). Though relieved, she is “oddly dejected” (229), unsure of where fate will lead her now that her great mission is done.

A week later Rügemer and Rokita arrive at the cottage and tell Irena she must come with them to Kielce. Realizing the city is closer to her family, she agrees, and Pasiewski tells her to find his brother-in-law, who is part of a partisan group. Irena is happy to find a renewed sense of purpose, as she can continue fighting against Poland’s enemies.

Irena must hide under a blanket in the major’s car during the trip to Kielce, and Irena supposes it’s probably illegal for them to transport a Polish civilian. When they arrive, the major leaves Irena alone in a hotel room, and she begins to plot her escape.