In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer

by Irene Gut Opdyke

  I walked to the fence. It was made of boards, with coils of barbed wire attached to metal posts and curved spikes at the top. Through the boards I could see the continuation of the alley on the other side, and the backs of two apartment houses. I glanced over my shoulder again, and then examined the ground under the fence. The alleyway was packed dirt, hard with frost. I took a large metal cooking spoon from my apron pocket and knelt down. I scraped at the dirt. The sound echoed loudly off the sides of the buildings, making my heart race. Not a face showed at a window. Not a footstep. Nothing.

  I gripped the spoon tighter, scraping and gouging at the ground until I had made a small hole, about the size of a loaf of bread, under the fence. From the pail I removed a layer of potato peelings, and took out a tin box I had filled with cheese and apples. I wedged that in the hole, and then hurried back to the kitchen. “Whoever helps a Jew shall be punished by death” was the warning I had heard over and over. It was written on posters. It was broadcast from loudspeakers on the street. “Whoever helps a Jew shall be punished by death.”

  The next morning, I looked for the box. It was empty.

  My heart thudded in my ears as I picked up the box. I had put food on the ground, and was now in danger of capital punishment. Without looking back, I entered the kitchen, and went back to work for the Nazis.

  Every day now, I found a chance to slip outside and leave food under the fence. I knew it was a drop in the ocean, but I could not do nothing. I never saw anyone on the ghetto side. I never lingered. I did not want to see anyone, nor did I want anyone to see me. In spite of what I was doing, my first concern was for Janina: She was my responsibility. I could not take any risk that would be a risk to her.

  And that was why, when she lost her job, I was torn about what to do. I wanted to have her with me, working at the hotel, where I could look out for her. But I did not want her to know the truth about what was happening, did not want her exposed to the conversation of the Nazi officers. I could not decide which was the lesser of two evils.

  In the meantime, however, we had news that made my decision for me. A former neighbor of ours from Kozłowa Góra showed up on Aunt Helen's doorstep one day between Christmas and New Year's. Peter was dressed in a German uniform, and was on his way to the front: He had been conscripted into the army. The sight of him in uniform depressed me, but I was anxious for news of our family. Peter handed me a letter, and when I begged him to wait, in case I had any questions he could answer, he looked nervous.

  “It won't look good for me or you,” he muttered, lighting a cigarette with red, chapped hands.

  We stayed on the steps in the icy air while I read Ma-musia's letter. It was on flimsy, tissuelike paper, so thin that the ink had bled through and the pen had torn it. But I held it steady in the wind and read it as fast as my tears would allow.

  “We are all together, but the girls are being worked as slaves in the clay mines…. We must all wear an armband with the letter ‘P,’ for ‘Pole,’ on it…. The Germans will not let Tatuś leave, and I am afraid, my dear girls, that we will not be reunited until this war is over.”

  I let out a groan, thinking of my little sisters working in the mines, in the cold, in the wet, covered with mud like animals. I pressed one hand to my chin to keep it from trembling.

  “I have to go,” Peter said.

  I grabbed his arm. “Have you seen them? Are they—”

  “They're alive. I must go.”

  I hugged my collar around my neck as he walked away. The gate banged shut behind him.

  To my mind, the matter was settled. I must have Janina close to me. I could not bear the thought of being separated from her. If she worked with me, I could keep my eye on her and possibly protect her from some of the horror that the world had become. The next day I asked Schulz, telling him how skilled and capable Janina was, and he readily agreed to put her on the staff, a decision he was authorized to make. So the new year of 1942 arrived, and Janina began working at my side in the officers’ dining hall, standing lookout for me when I put my tin box under the ghetto fence.

  It was at the beginning of the year also that Schulz told me the entire operation would be moving east in April. The eastern front was being pushed deep into Russian territory, and the Germans were pressing the advantage. The munitions factory would relocate to be closer to the fighting, and we— the domestic staff—would be going, too. For this reason, I was even happier that Janina was now working with me. We would be moved together.

  We would be moving in the spring. To Ternopol. I couldn't believe my ears when Schulz told me our destination. It seemed I had done nothing for the last two springs but try to leave Ternopol, and here I was going back again! I had no fear that my old persecutors would be there: That part of the Ukraine was now firmly under the control of the Germans. But I didn't know whether to laugh or cry at the irony of it. It was springtime; it was time to return to Ternopol.

  In the meantime, the number of officers who came for meals every day increased with the escalation in the war effort. A new factory facility was under construction, and Major Rügemer awaited daily reports from the building site to the east. A feeling of expectancy filled the dining room during each meal, and the buzz of talk was like the hum of machinery.

  Often, dinner conversation would come to a standstill as someone tuned the radio to listen to a speech from Berlin; as Hitler's voice broke like hail upon the china and crystal, Janina and I would exchange quick looks and tiptoe away with our heavy trays. The Bolsheviks, enemies of the Reich, would be crushed!—the manic voice would shout—And the Jews, who were in league with the Bolsheviks, would feel the heels of the invincible Wehrmacht on their necks!

  To us, these speeches sounded bizarre and grotesque; they were the spit and vomit of a madman. And yet, the officers would be turned to Hitler's portrait at the end of the room, listening transfixed, as though to the words of their savior. I thought of the poor Jews I had seen shot down, and I wondered how the officers could believe that old men in prayer shawls, mothers with children, fathers plying their trades could be dangerous enemies.

  But obviously, they did. One morning in March, when Janina and I arrived at work, we saw bulldozers crawling across the rubble that had been the ghetto. Here and there among the broken masonry and the shattered window frames I noticed a crushed hat, a burst suitcase, a silver candlestick. Janina and I tried not to make it obvious that we were watching as we scurried past the noise and destruction. A Gestapo officer paced back and forth along the sidewalk like a dog guarding a bone. I felt for Janina's hand and gripped it tight. She was pale with grief, and I felt, myself, as though I had lost someone dear; an announcement was being trumpeted with great pride from the loudspeaker at the corner of the street: “This town is Jew-free!”

  But It Was Not a Bird

  By the time we were to move, Radom had become unbearable to me. It was now impossible not to understand what Hitler's plans for the Jews were, and every day that I had to pass the demolished ghetto opened the wound afresh. Sometimes, at night, Janina and I would recall Jewish friends from our girlhood, remembering the trouble we got into when we snuck out at night to attend a party, or the laughs we had falling into the lily pond near Tatuś’ factory. David, Aaron, Rachel, Ruth—friends who were Jewish but who were not different from us. It seemed to us, as we lay sleepless in the dark, that if our childhood friends could be considered enemies, what was to keep us from the same fate? Weren't we all the same? Hitler would finish the Jews, ghetto by ghetto, and then turn his full attention to the rest of us Poles.

  I was sorry to say farewell to Aunt Helen, but I did not regret leaving Radom. I did not expect to find life different anywhere else, however. We were sent east by truck to Lvov; the new factory in Ternopol was not yet ready, but it was necessary to move our operations closer to the Russian front.

  Janina and I packed; our luggage was one suitcase for the two of us. As the convoy of trucks bounced and bucked over the potholed roads, we watche
d the countryside go past. April had poured streams of wildflowers between the furrows of the farmland: the yellow kaczeniec, blue forget-me-not, pink primroses. But much of the farmland was fallow, abandoned by peasants on the run from the war, or left idle by farmers who were themselves fighting in the war. At this time of year, there should have been a pale green haze like a lacy scarf lying over the rich land, but there were few fields where the wheat was coming up. Food would grow scarce that fall, obviously, but I knew it wouldn't be the Germans going hungry.

  Our temporary barracks in Lvov was another converted hotel. Now, close to the front, our outfit's staff grew, and I was kept on the run constantly—before, during, and after every meal. Janina's job was to act as housekeeper for the German officers’ and secretaries’ rooms. Our schedule left us little extra time. My birthday, May 5, came and went with little to make it different from every other busy day, except that Janina surprised me with a bouquet of lilacs, which perfumed the kitchen and reminded us of old, sweet times.

  I was twenty now, and it seemed as though half my life had been wartime. Sometimes I felt like an old woman. I had seen terrible things, and terrible things had been done to me. Often—such as when a German officer made some rude, suggestive comment, or when I saw a child in the street who looked particularly thin and hungry—often I felt a great welling up of hatred and rebellion. It was not right, what I had seen, and what had been done to me, and what I saw around me every day. In God's name, it was not right! And yet I was relatively safe. I was well fed. I had my sister with me. I knew that most people were not as well off as I was. If I felt so much anger and outrage, what must other people not so fortunate be feeling? Surely, the evil being done in my country must be a poison that would ruin the soil, tarnish the air, and foul the water. Sometimes, when I thought of the amount of hatred dwelling in Poland, I was surprised to see that the grass was still green, that the trees still flourished their leaves against a blue sky.

  And yet they did. It is a terrible irony of war, that nature itself does not rebel when man turns against his brother. I have seen nightmares take place on beautiful spring days. The birds can hop from one branch to another, tipping their heads and honing their small beaks against the bark while a child dies in the mud below.

  From time to time—when there was time—these thoughts led me to church. One Sunday, Janina and I found ourselves walking out at the end of the mass with a young Polish woman and her mother. We exchanged greetings, and seeing that it was a beautiful day, and that our paths lay together for some distance, we took a stroll together, which brought us to a park. The young woman introduced herself as we paused by a duck pond.

  “My name is Helen Weinbaum, and this is my mother, Pani Klimeka.”

  “Dzien dobry,” Janina said with a sunny smile. “It is such a pleasure to meet you. I am Janina Gutowna, and this is my big sister, Irena.”

  “How nice to speak Polish!” I said. “We work for the Germans—their language sounds harsh, no matter what ! you say.”

  “Have you always lived in Lvov?” Janina asked.

  Helen and her mother exchanged a sad look, and Helen patted the older woman's shoulder.

  “No. We used to live in Krasnoe, but my—my father was killed by the Gestapo in a reprisal because someone slashed the tires of the commandant's car. And my husband, Henry, was taken to a work camp for Jews near here. I have tried to get permission to visit him at the Arbeitslager, but so far it is not allowed.”

  Helen absently tore a handful of leaves from an overhanging branch as she spoke, dropping them one by one into the water as she mentioned each thing that had befallen her family. The ripples spread out from each leaf, gliding away endlessly. She was lucky, if you could call it luck, that they had not arrested her along with her husband. Helen was not Jewish, but she fervently swore she wished she were: At least then she would be with her beloved Henry in the Arbeitslager.

  In turn, Janina and I told of our own misfortunes, and of how we had come to be in Lvov. Everyone in Poland in those days had a bitter story. Everyone. Our tales made a bond between us; we parted company that day as good friends, and Janina and I promised to visit Helen and her mother in their cottage outside of town when we could, and to bring food, because they had so little.

  We did visit with them often as the spring progressed, and I began to feel I had another sister. There were times when Helen and Janina and I could laugh and act as if there were no war; but then something would remind Helen of her Henry, and her laughter would stick in her throat.

  As the weeks followed each other into the summer, more and more of the officers and secretaries went on ahead to Ternopol; our work became much lighter, and we had more time off to spend with our new friends. One Sunday in July, we found Helen and her mother in a state of barely controlled hysteria. They had heard a rumor that a large number of Jews from the Arbeitslagers and from surrounding shtetls had been rounded up by the SS and were being held in a nearby village. Helen begged us to go with her, to see if she could find Henry among them.

  Janina and I did not have to confer. The four of us hitched a ride on a farmer's wagon and were soon in town, at the bus station. There were dozens of people waiting for the same bus, and from the bits and pieces of overheard conversation, we knew that most of them were on the same fearful errand.

  As we waited in the sun for our bus, rumor snuck like a pickpocket through the crowd, stealing the hope from people's hearts. At first, only isolated words stood out against the general murmur: Camps. Disappeared. All. Death squads. Then we heard whole phrases: Burned the synagogue. Shot the men. Orders from Berlin. One by one, these words and phrases fitted into each other like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Somewhere a woman let out a wail. An old man called out to God. Helen was staring ahead at the street, as though forcing the bus to arrive by her own will. I saw that she was holding her mother's hand, and then realized that I was holding Janina's hand. Wherever Henry Weinbaum was, he was in danger: He was in the hands of the SS. We might find him at the end of our journey. We might not.

  All of us in that crowd were fearful of what lay ahead, and yet when the bus finally came wheezing and grinding its gears down the street, we rushed forward as one body. The bus filled. It pulled away. We were all on it.

  There was very little talk as the bus made its way to our destination. There was nothing to say. When we arrived, we climbed down onto the hot pavement, and as if by some secret signal, like a flock of sparrows wheeling away across a church square, we all moved in one direction.

  It was in the marketplace. The whole square had been fenced off. Behind the barbed wire stood hundreds of people whose yellow stars marked them as Jews. Trucks were unloading scores more, and as each man, woman, or child jumped down, bewildered and frightened, the black-uniformed SS men sorted them roughly: women and children one way, old men another, young men toward another mass of trucks. Outside the fence, friends and family members pressed against the wire, calling out names, crowding for a glimpse of a loved one.

  “I don't see him! How will I find him?” Helen wailed, standing on her toes and looking frantically one way and then another.

  Suddenly, several of the guards strode toward the fence, shouting at the crowd. “Raus! Raus verHuchte Schweine!” One of them slung the gun off his shoulder and began shooting into the air.

  There were screams on our side of the wire, and people stumbled into one another. Some would not be chased away, but kept pressing forward. The man with the gun leveled it at us, and we broke in panic. We were all running, but when I heard Janina cry out, I turned to help her.

  “I've twisted my ankle!” she gasped, struggling to her feet.

  Helen and I took her arms, and the four of us dodged through the crowd to a row of buildings lining the square. We slipped down an alley, and I found a door that stood ajar. Putting my shoulder to it, I shoved it wide, and we all hurried inside.

  It was a house. It was someone's house, but no one lived there now: furniture was bro
ken, scattered across the floor. Broken dishes and glassware lay in piles, and dark squares on the wallpaper showed where pictures and paintings had been taken down.

  “This is a Jewish home,” Helen said, turning around and around amid the wreckage. “This house has been raided.”

  We heard more shouts and pounding footsteps on the street outside. Without speaking, we ran up the stairs and into a front bedroom. Janina hobbled to a window, and stood with her back to the wall so she could peek out sideways. We all did the same. We did not speak, but our hard breathing was loud in the empty room.

  Below in the marketplace, the SS men had lined up facing the Jews, their guns gleaming in the sun. “Raus, Schwein-hundjude! Schnett! Schnett!” Out, Jewish pigs! Fast! Fast!

  The gates were dragged open, and the Jewish prisoners were forced out through a gauntlet, while the guards beat at them with their rifle butts. An old man, tottering with a cane, was not fast enough, and a guard shot him on the spot. In vain, women tried to protect their small children from blows, men tried to shield their old fathers. But every time someone stumbled and fell under the beatings, shots rang out. The street was paved with bodies, and still the Jews were forced to march out over them.

  We watched this from our windows in a paralysis of horror. We could do nothing but watch. We could not even pull back from the glass to keep hidden. An old rabbi carrying the Torah stopped to help a young woman with a shrieking toddler, and all three were shot. A graybeard in a faded uniform of the Polish army from the last war limped past the guards, and he, too, was not fast enough. The sun shone down on all of them, and the dust settled in pools of blood.

  By this time, the four of us were crying uncontrollably. Helen was on her knees, sobbing in her mother's arms. Janina turned her face away. But I watched, flattening myself against the window. As I pressed against the glass, I saw an officer make a flinging movement with his arm, and something rose up into the sky like a fat bird. With his other hand he aimed his pistol, and the bird plummeted to the ground beside its screaming mother, and the officer shot the mother, too.