Thursday, May 16, 2024

Irene Gut Opdyke

Irene Gut Opdyke



Irene Gut was born on May 5, 1918 in Kozienice, Poland into a Catholic Family.

She was 17 years old when the Germans invaded western Poland and the Soviets invaded eastern Poland in September 1939.

She was beaten and gangraped by Soviet Soldiers.

During the German Occupation of eastern Poland (June 1941) she was forced to work in a Munitions Factory.

Anemic, Irene fainted at the feet of a Wehrmacht Major, Eduard Rügemer while working at the Factory one day.

Rügemer decided to have Irene to work in a kitchen of a hotel that frequently served Nazi Officials when he learned she was fluent in German.

After witnessing a German Nazi take a Jewish Infant from its Mother and killed it by throwing it head-first onto the ground Irene started helping Jews in the Tarnopol Ghetto.

She brought them food from her job at the hotel.

After hearing an SS Commander say all the local Jews would be killed soon Irene hid 12 Jews that worked at the hotel in Rügemer’s Villa.

During the day, when Rügemer was at work, Irene would let the 12 People out of their hiding place and into the rest of the Villa.

One day Rügemer came home and found the Jews not in their hiding place.

Rügemer told Irene that he wouldn’t report her or the Jews to the Gestapo if she became his Mistress and so she did.

In 1944, Rügemer fled Tarnopol with the other Germans.

Irene continued to hide the 12 Jews until liberation came.

After learning that her Father had been killed and her Mother and Sisters arrested by the Soviet Secret Police (and not wanting to be raped by more Soviet Soldiers) Irene fled to a Displaced Persons Camp in western Germany.

In 1949 she moved to the United States.

In 1956 Irene married an American, William Opdyke, a former United Nations Delegate whom she had briefly met at the Displaced Persons Camp in Germany and bumped into again after arriving in New York.

They settled in California and had a Daughter, Jeannie.

Irene kept her World War 2 Story to herself for decades.

She eventually decided to tell it after hearing a Holocaust Denial.

Irene was recognized as a Righteous Among the Nations by Israel’s Yad Vashem in 1982.



William Opdyke died in 1993.

In 1999 her Memoir “In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer” was published.

Irene Gut Opdyke died on May 17, 2003 in Fullerton, California at the age of 85.

In 2023 a movie “Irena’s Vow” was made telling her story. French-Canadian Actress Sophie Nélisse plays Irene Gut Opdyke.


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