Acts of Courage

Irene Gut Opdyke’s pale blue eyes watered slightly as she sat at her dining table recalling certain wartime images from her native Poland: a rabbi beaten to death by a Nazi soldier; a baby thrown against the ground, its mother leaping to save it, only to be shot.

“I never forget that young woman’s scream as she leaped to save her child,” the 71-year-old said, her voice trembling. “With one bullet to her head, she was dead, lying next to her child.”

As a Polish-Catholic woman barely out of her teens, Opdyke saved at least 12 Jews during the Holocaust by hiding them in a German-occupied Ukrainian villa where she worked as a housekeeper for a Nazi major.

Opdyke will be recognized, along with eight other women, Wednesday evening at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles during the fifth annual International Women’s Day Celebration. She also has been nominated for a Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, according to White House Assistant Press Secretary April Mellody. Previous recipients of the medal include Dr. Jonas Salk, Bob Hope and Walter Cronkite.

A small and gentle woman who speaks with a slight Polish accent, Opdyke tells her story as though it happened yesterday. In 1939, Irene Gut (her maiden name) was an 18-year-old nursing student in Radom, Poland, when Germany conquered Poland. She fled to a Russian-occupied forest in the Ukraine, where she was raped and beaten by Russian soldiers. She recovered, only to be captured by German soldiers as she prayed in church in Radom. She was forced into labor at a German munitions factory.

“That was the first time I witnessed the persecution,” she said, recalling the view she had from a second-story window at the factory. “I saw little children running and soldiers were just shooting them.”

Eventually she was recruited by the German major Eduard Rugemer to serve as a housekeeper at the officers’ compounds near the factory.

Moving with the German occupancy, Opdyke spent time at Lwow, where she witnessed Gestapo soldiers beating a rabbi to death, blood trickling down the Torah he carried.

“I saw another SS threw a baby in the air and shot like a bird,” she said.

The Germans next occupied Tarnopol, where she was given additional duties in the laundry room, and where she befriended the 12 Jews she would later save. While serving meals to the Gestapo, she became the eyes and ears for Jews in the nearby ghetto.

In July, 1943, she overheard Gestapo leaders talk about gutting the ghettos, where her friends lived. Desperate, her friends asked Opdyke to hide them.

Miraculously, a few days later, Rugemer told her that he would be moving to a nearby villa and taking her with him as his housekeeper.

“When I saw the villa, I just knew there would be a place for my friends,” she said. “I believe that God put me in the right place at the right time.”

Rumored to have been designed by Jewish architects, the villa featured a hiding space underneath its gazebo. Opdyke led her friends to a coal chute into the cellar, and through a narrow tunnel that led to the hiding place, their sanctuary for the next eight months.

The personal risk she was taking became clear one day, when Opdyke witnessed a public hanging of a Polish family who hid a Jewish family.

“There is no way to explain it,” she said. “You hear them fighting for breath, their children screaming.”

Shaken, she returned home but forgot to lock the front door. Unexpectedly, the major walked in on her and her friends. Though he didn’t reveal her secret, she was forced to “pay the price.”

“I was pretty. He was an old man,” she said. “It was a small price to pay for the many lives.”

But by then, the war was already nearing its end. By the spring of 1944 the major left the villa and Opdyke and her friends escaped to the forest, where they separated. She was unable to locate her family.

In 1949, she arrived in New York City. Six years later, she encountered William Opdyke, a worker for United Nations. They first met, coincidentally, at a repatriation center in Germany in 1948. Six weeks after they met again they were married. In 1957 Opdyke gave birth to a daughter, Janina, and has lived in Yorba Linda for nearly three decades.

For years she swore to place a large “do not disturb” sign on her memory.

“I did not want to know about war or the Holocaust,” she said. “I wanted to raise my child and know America.”

But in 1974, she heard of historians denouncing the Holocaust’s veracity. Outraged, she broke her vow of silence and spoke at her husband’s Rotary club.

Rabbi Haim Asa of Temple Beth Tikvah in Fullerton saw a local newspaper article about Opdyke’s speech and tracked her down. Asa then embarked on an eight-year campaign to have her recognized by the Yab Vashem, the highest Holocaust authority in Israel.

After one of the surviving families was finally located in Munich, Opdyke was flown to Jerusalem in 1982 and awarded the Medal of Righteousness, a high honor awarded by Yab Vashem to Gentiles who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. “She is a loving, selfless, caring Christian and a wonderful woman,” Asa said. “People need to realize that one person can make a difference.”

Today, at least four of the 12 Jews Opdyke saved are still alive. Opdyke was finally reunited with her four younger sisters in 1985 and learned that her father was killed by Germans in 1945. Her mother died of a stroke in 1957. Opdyke’s husband died four years ago of Alzheimer’s disease.

Although it is painful for her to recall the atrocities of the Holocaust, she hopes people will benefit from her story.

“To be able to save people . . . “ Opdyke said. “I am so rich, beyond imagination. People ask me, would you do it again? Yes. Beyond a shadow of doubt, I will do it. This is my mission in life.”