Heroism in the Holocaust

Irene Gut Opdyke’s pale blue eyes watered slightly as she sat at her dining table, recalling 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.

Along with eight other women, Opdyke will be recognized 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, gentle woman who speaks with a slight Polish accent, Opdyke tells her story as though it happened yesterday. At times she is calm, her hands resting on the table. But when she revisits moments of horror, her voice ignites with anger and fear.

In 1939, Irene Gut (her maiden name) was an 18-year-old nursing student in Radom, Poland, when Germany invaded. She fled to a Russian-occupied forest in the Ukraine, where she was raped and beaten by Russian soldiers. She was able to briefly reunite with her family in Radom, but while attending church there, she was captured by German soldiers and 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 a 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 saw Gestapo soldiers beating a rabbi to death.

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

The Germans next occupied Tarnopol, where she befriended the 12 Jews whom 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.

“What could I do?” she said. “I was alone, I lived in a tiny little room, so I just prayed like I never prayed before.”

A few days later, Rugemer told her they would be moving to a nearby villa.

“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 the hiding place, their sanctuary for the next eight months.

The risk she was taking became clear the day she witnessed the public hanging of a Polish family who had hidden 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. “I don’t say he pulled me by the hair or beat me up. He was in love--an old man in love with a pretty woman. It was a small price to pay for the many lives.”

By the spring of 1944, the major left the villa and Opdyke and her friends escaped to the forest, but she was unable to find her family.

In 1949, Opdyke came to the United States. Six years later, she married William Opdyke, a worker for the United Nations. They later had a daughter. Opdyke has lived in Yorba Linda for nearly three decades. “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 challenging 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. He then embarked on an eight-year campaign to have her recognized by the Yab Vashem, the highest Holocaust authority in Israel.

In 1982, Opdyke was flown to Jerusalem 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. “People need to realize that one person can make a difference,” Asa said.