In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer

Chapter 1begins by describing a moment before Irena Opdyke’s birth: May Day 1921, the “lilac time” of the chapter’s title and the day her parents were drawn together.

In the small Polish village of Kozienice, Opdyke’s mother, Maria Rębieś, is participating in the young women’s May Day tradition of sending a “boat”—a block of wood with her name written on it, topped with a lit candle—down the river. The young men of the village are waiting for the boats downstream, and among them is Władysław Gut, an architect and chemist who is in town to supervise the building of a ceramics factory. Gut isn’t planning to participate in what he views as an “ancient folk custom” (6), but he finds himself drawn to one boat that floats apart from the others. Amid this magical atmosphere, with “the scent of lilacs luring [Gut] into the water in his city clothes” (7), Gut finds that “Maria Rębieś’ candle sailed straight into his outstretched hands, like a bird settling onto its nest” (7).

Gut and Maria are soon married, and almost a year later, on May 5, 1922, Irena is born “when the lilacs were blooming again” (7). When Irena is only a toddler, the village priest tells her mother that “God has plans for your daughter” (8).

Throughout Irena’s childhood, her family moves frequently because of her father’s job, and more sisters arrive, until five girls fill the house. The sisters develop a habit of caring for wounded animals, including a stork with an injured wing.

Irena recounts fond memories of her childhood winters in Poland, where the weather might be “very bitter, but in our house, we were always warm and happy” (10). The chapter ends with Irena visiting the Black Madonna, a painting of Poland’s mother saint, on Christmas night. Irena finds it easy to believe the painting is “miraculous” (11) and that the Holy Mother will always protect Poland. However, as she hints at the end of the chapter, war is coming to Europe, and her country’s foundation will be shaken. 

Chapter 2 begins by briefly describing Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Germany in 1934, an event which Irena, now a teenager, doesn’t pay much attention to. Irena and her family now live in Kozłowa Góra, a Polish city not far from the German border. Although many assume from her family name, “Gut,” that Irena is German, she has actually been raised to take great pride in her Polish heritage. Having little interest in romance, Irena instead fantasizes that she is “caught up in heroic struggles […] saving lives, sacrificing myself for others” (14).

Finding little opportunity for “righteous adventures” (14) in Kozłowa Góra, Irena instead devotes herself to charitable activities, eventually becoming a volunteer for the Red Cross. She is inspired by the nuns who care for the sick and decides to become a nun herself, but her father suggests she study to become a nurse first. She enrolls in St. Mary’s Hospital in Radom and begins school in 1938, at the age of sixteen, over 200 kilometers away from her family.

Irena has difficulty adjusting to the dirty, industrial city of Radom, so she copes by throwing herself into her studies. Meanwhile, she begins to notice patriotic activity in the city and becomes aware that Hitler hopes to reclaim Polish land for the Germans. When she returns home over the summer, she finds that Kozłowa Góra has changed, with many citizens speaking only German, openly supporting Hitler’s government, and discriminating against Jews. At this point, Irena says, she and her family “did not imagine where [this cultural shift] would lead”—they still don’t realize that, as she puts it in the final sentence of the chapter, “Hitler wanted to destroy us” (18).

Irena returns to school in Radom in August. Soon after, Germany and the Soviet Union announce their non-aggression treaty, a development that worries Polish citizens who “sat defenseless between these two countries” (19). On September 1, the Germans attack Radom, dropping bombs that destroy people and buildings indiscriminately. Irena hurries to St. Mary’s and for the next four days, the hospital becomes her “whole world” as she tends to the many wounded, all the while agonizing over her family, whose home is now part of Hitler’s Germany.

Outside of the hospital, the Polish forces have begun to retreat, and when army officers ask for medical staff to accompany them, Irena immediately volunteers. Traveling on a Red Cross truck, she sees the city around her in complete devastation, with the entire population fleeing and “cars burning, houses in ruins, glass and bricks strewn across the streets” (23). The truck arrives at a train station, and Irena makes it onto the train while supporting a soldier with a broken leg. Amid crashing bombs, screaming men, and a train full of wounded soldiers, the train begins to travel east, toward the Russians.

The group of soldiers and medical staff arrive at Kovno, an area near the Soviet Union that’s as yet untouched by the fighting. The general announces that the Germans and Soviets have conquered and divided Poland, and “we are not a country any longer. There is no more Poland” (29). He releases the soldiers to return home; in shock, Irena finds herself following the “ragtag army-without-a-country” into the Lithuanian forest (30). They head south, toward Lvov, but Irena isn’t sure why.  

Along with the former soldiers, Irena travels through the forest for months, until Christmas comes and goes and “we entered 1940 without hope” (32). Going from village to village, camping, and scavenging for food, Irena has to adjust to a new existence where “we lived however we could, growing sick, shivering, huddling ourselves against the snow” (32).

In January, Irena is part of a bartering mission with the Russians, and a Russian patrol attacks. Irena tries to escape, imagining she can fly off like a bird, but as the chapter ends, she tells us, “I was almost fast enough” (34).

Irena opens this chapter with something she finds “hard to say” (35): as a girl of seventeen who had never been kissed, she was caught, beaten unconscious, and raped by the Russians. She says they “left me for dead in the snow, under the frozen stars, with the dark forest keeping watch over my death” (35). Another Russian patrol finds her and puts her in the back of a truck, and she awakens to discover she is a prisoner in a Russian hospital in Ternopol. The doctor tending to Irena, Dr. Olga Pavlovskaya, tells her that since the hospital is short-staffed, they will put her to work as soon as she is well enough.

Months pass, and a new administrator comes to the hospital: Dr. Ksydzof, a “bitter, sneering man” (40) who seems to dislike Irena. One night, Dr. Ksydzof comes to Irena’s bed and attempts to rape her, and she smashes his head with a glass bottle. Irena seeks help from a kinder doctor, Dr. David, who finds a woman who will take Irena in to work at an infirmary in a small Russian village. Irena begins looking for a way to escape the hospital, and Dr. David provides her with a train ticket and an address.

In the middle of March, Irena sneaks out of the hospital and makes her way onto a train, heading east. She arrives in the small village of Svetlana and is met by Dr. David’s friend, Miriam, who explains that Irena must pretend to be her cousin, Rachel Meyer. Miriam welcomes Irena into a small, cozy cottage attached to a clinic, and Irena feels grateful that “someone was taking care of me” (47).

Irena immediately begins helping out in the infirmary, dealing with local accidents and illnesses and learning much from Miriam, a skilled doctor. Dr. David sends word that Dr. Ksydzof has denounced Irena as part of “a dangerous group of subversive Polish partisans,” but has also claimed that Irena is “rotting away in a Russian jail” (50). Irena celebrates her eighteenth birthday with Miriam and stays in Svetlana until 1941, sheltered from the war but “yearning for my family in Poland” (50).

In January, Dr. David writes that the Russians and Germans are allowing Poles who have been separated from their families to cross battle lines in the spring. Irena wants to find her family, but Miriam warns her that it will be dangerous for her to return to Ternopol, where she might still be wanted by the Russian army. In March, Irena finally sees confirmation of Dr. David’s news in the newspaper. After almost a year in Svetlana, Irena says a tearful goodbye to Miriam and begins the journey home to her family, and “home to war” (52).