Essays on In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer

In this autobiography, Irene Gut Opdyke describes her experiences as a Polish Catholic who saved the lives of twelve Jewish workers during World War II. Gut Opdyke was working as a nurse in a German military hospital when she met a young Jewish man named Jacob. She helped him escape from the hospital and then took him in to her home, where she hid him from the Nazis. When the Gestapo came looking for Jacob, Gut Opdyke convinced them that he had already been sent to a different hospital. She then helped the other eleven Jews escape from the hospital and hid them in her home as well.
Gut Opdyke risked her own life to save the lives of the Jews, and she was eventually caught and sent to a concentration camp. However, she was able to escape from the camp and make her way back to her home, where she found that the Jews she had been hiding were still alive. After the war, Gut Opdyke moved to the United States, where she wrote her autobiography, In My Hands.