In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer

by Irene Opdyke; Jennifer Armstrong

  “Stitte!” A soldier lunged toward me, but I ducked away and went quickly where I was supposed to go. I felt the muscles in my back clench and twitch as I walked past a row of machine guns to the group of fit workers.

  “Where will they take us?” a red-haired woman groaned, clutching her husband's arm.

  “I don't know,” he replied. He was trying to be brave for her, I could see.

  Three troop transport vehicles roared into the church square, and we were chased into them. Some people cried, others cursed as we were driven to a camp snarled with barbed wire.

  “You will be transported to Germany to work for the Reich,” an officer informed us as we stood before our new barracks. “You Poles have been idle long enough.”

  A tangible flood of grief swamped us where we stood. Several women began weeping anew. I felt again the strange detachment, the disbelief that this was happening to me. I stared at my hands as though they were the hands of a stranger.

  A dignified, middle-aged man stepped forward to address the officer. “I must protest. You have no right to treat us in this manner,” he said. “We must be allowed to contact our families.”

  Without a word, two guards stepped forward and clubbed the man to the ground with their rifle butts. We stood watching, horrified and sick at heart, hearing the sound of the blows. Blood was trickling from the man's ears by the time the soldiers were finished. He lay splayed in the dirt, his shoes beaten off him and his arms curled around his head, and not one of us dared go to him.

  “I think we understand each other now,” the officer said.

  At last, when the officer left us, two men hurried forward to help the beaten man. The October sun was still strong, and in the heat the smell of blood and urine that came from the man on the ground reminded me of a hospital ward. I waved away a fly and went to see how I could help.

  We were hauling the man to his feet when another truck roared into the camp and came to a stop. A cloud of dust settled around it as a Nazi major climbed down from the passenger side and tugged his hat to set it more securely on his head. He was an older man, closer to seventy than sixty, and he breathed through his mouth as though he had a stuffed nose.

  “You and you,” he said, pointing to one man and then another. “And you.”

  One by one, he picked out ten men and women, almost at random. Last, he pointed to me.

  “Into the truck.”

  Without further ado, he climbed back in and slammed the door. Newly alarmed, we ten hurried toward the back of the troop transport. A soldier let down the tailgate and hustled us in with the point of his gun.

  “Now what?” one woman asked.

  “Matka Boska,” a man swore softly.

  “Please, God, let Janina know I am all right,” I whispered. “Please look after her for me.”

  The driver gunned the engine, and the truck jerked forward, rocking us against one another. We had no way to know where they were taking us. I craned my head to see out the back, for what I feared was my last view of Poland.

  Major Rügemer

  It must be said that I was now a slave. What else do you call someone put to work in an ammunition factory, kept under guard, and paid no wages? My one comfort was that—despite all my fears—I was still in Poland. Still in Radom, even. The transport truck had brought us back to town, and we were put into barracks. I did not recognize the part of town we were in, and I could not tell how far from home I was. I did not know how to get word to Janina and Aunt Helen that I was there in Radom, forced to work for the Reich.

  My work was packing ammunition in boxes. The factory floor was a hell of noise and chemical fumes. Any idea we might have of thwarting our captors was defeated from the start: Our speed and efficiency were checked repeatedly, and the punishment for sabotaging the ammunition was death. There was no appeal. I fell into my bunk every night exhausted and weak from undernourishment and from breathing gunpowder. I was more anemic than ever. Often, I felt so faint on the factory floor that I caught myself swaying and had to grab the workbench to keep from falling. We were forced to work standing for hours at a time. Workers disappeared regularly, and no one dared ask what had happened to them. By the time I had been in the factory for two weeks, I was sick and wasted, but I was terrified that if I could not do this terrible job, I would be taken away to something even worse.

  One morning, a cadre of officers came to inspect us, and I recognized the major who had chosen us for the factory. As he approached my station, I bent my head to my work, my hands fumbling with the shells I had to bundle, and darkness flooded my vision from the sides until I could not see. I knew I was falling, and I faintly heard the sound of my own body hitting the floor.

  When I came to, I was on a couch in an office. The major handed me a cup of coffee.

  “Wie heisst du?” he asked.

  My hands shook as I took the cup. “My name is Irene Gut.” I noticed his surprise that I had understood German, and that I spoke it well. “Before the war, I lived in Oberschle-sien.”

  He took a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose. “You must be of German descent, with that name.”

  “I don't know—I don't think so. I am Polish.” I sipped the coffee, which was rich with milk and sugar, luxuries I hadn't tasted in months.

  “So, you don't claim to be German—you'd be surprised how many people do,” he said. He gave me a cynical smile. “I must admire your honesty for not attempting to do so.”

  We were both silent for a moment while I drank my coffee. Then he went to his desk and stirred some papers with his forefinger, frowning. “You are jeopardizing the efficiency of the factory. If you are too sick to work—”

  “No, Herr Major! I am not too sick!” I interrupted. I struggled to sit up. “Please don't deport me. Please let me stay here, where I am close to my sister. I will work harder.”

  He did not look at me. He was considering. “Your German is very good. Perhaps you are wasted on the assembly line.”

  I held my breath, trying not to cry.

  “I have a job for which you might be better suited, at the officers’ mess. Do you have domestic skills? Any experience in a kitchen, and serving food?”

  I nearly jumped from the couch. “Yes, Herr Major! My mother brought us up to be able to do everything in the home, to prepare food and be a good hostess. I can do all those things!”

  The major nodded as he began writing. “Report to Herr Schulz at seven in the morning, at this address. He doesn't speak Polish, and he has been having terrible trouble communicating with the Polish staff. He will be delighted to have you.” He began to hand the pass to me, but kept it out of my reach as I leaned forward. “I am letting you go to your home, but do not fail to show up or I will send a patrol for you.”

  “No, Major,” I breathed. “I will not be late. I will not disappoint you. Thank you.”

  He paused another moment, and then handed me the pass. It was signed Major Eduard Rügemer.

  To say that Janina and Aunt Helen were surprised to see me is an understatement. Janina burst into tears and threw her arms around me, and would not let me go for several minutes. While I ate some bread and a carrot, I told them what had happened to me since the Sunday I had been caught in the lapanka. Janina kept hold of my hand and repeatedly brushed tears from her face as I spoke. When I collapsed into bed that night, I felt that I had slid to the edge of an abyss, but someone had dragged me back.

  By six-thirty the next morning, I was on my way to my new job. The address Major Rügemer had given me was of an old hotel in the southeast corner of downtown Radom. It was a stately, dignified old place, where once weddings and parties had set the chandeliers jingling with dance music. I turned down the alley at the side of the hotel to the service entrance, and went in.

  A stout, red-faced man in a big white apron was just walking to the door with a pail of garbage.

  “Yes?”

  “I am looking for Herr Schulz,” I said in German.

  “Y
ou have found him,” he replied, looking me up and down. “You are my new girl?”

  “Yes, Herr Schulz. Irene Gut.”

  “Does ‘Irene’ mean ‘Skinnybones’ in Polish, perhaps?”

  I blushed. “Oh, I am sorry,” I stammered. “I am—”

  “Hungry. So, I will feed you. Come this way, Fräulein Skinnybones.”

  Warily, hungrily, I followed him back the way he had come, down the corridor and into the huge kitchen. There were piles of good food everywhere: fresh bread—white bread—cheeses, fruits, round beets with dirt still clinging to them, baskets of apples, pastries, pots of jam. There were two walk-in refrigerators, which my hungry imagination filled with meat and poultry and tall cans of creamy milk. I had not seen such quantities of food since before the war began.

  Herr Schulz began piling a plate, talking to me at the same time. “I need you to help me with the tradesmen and deliveries,” he explained. “The Polish language is nothing but gibberish to me—I beg your pardon.”

  I lowered myself into a chair at the table, wondering if it could be my hunger that made me believe that Herr Schulz was a friendly, kindly man. He carved a thick slice of bread and balanced it atop my full plate, and then sat and watched me expectantly.

  “Eat. Go ahead,” he urged me with a smile.

  “You are very—kind,” I said at last, picking up a fork.

  He cocked his head to one side. “So, you think Herr Schulz does not have daughters of his own? Go ahead, dig in.”

  I decided I would not question his generosity, but be grateful for it. I managed to give him a quick smile before I attacked my food. For as long as I could remember, I had not eaten enough to be full, but now it looked as though Herr Schulz wished me to be big and fat. I almost cried at my good fortune.

  While I tore my bread in half and smeared butter on it, Schulz mixed an egg yolk in a glass of red wine and sugar. “I see you are not only hungry but perhaps sick, too. This is to build up your blood.”

  “Thank you very much, Herr Schulz.”

  I soon found out that my impression of him was not wrong. Schulz was a good, friendly man. To be sure, he was in the Wehrmacht, but he was a cook, not a soldier, and he had none of the ferocity and malevolence that I had come to expect of the Germans. And although he was a perfectionist and liked everything to be done just so, he was quick with praise and gentle with rebukes.

  In addition to acting as translator for Schulz, I helped to serve three meals a day in the dining room, where German officers from all over the city gathered for pork chops, roasted chicken, sauerkraut and knockwurst, soufflés, beet soup, chocolate cakes. The amount of food I saw consumed—and left over—in that room sometimes made my head spin, especially when I knew how poorly everyone else was eating. After several weeks, I got up the courage to ask Schulz if I might take some leftovers home for my aunt and my sister, and naturally, he was generous in preparing packages of meat, bread, and vegetables. It made my heart ache with relief when I noticed that Janina was beginning to lose the pinched and hollow look in her face. We still did not hear anything from our parents, but every day we prayed that they sometimes had a chance to eat good food.

  Frequently, my work cleaning up after dinner kept me after curfew, especially if there was a party that went on for several hours. Major Rügemer signed passes for me, or allowed Schulz to drive me home. The major was always polite when I served him in the dining room; he remembered my name and asked how my sister was. Dozens of SS and Wehrmacht officers came and went all the time, and they were the usual mixture of men: some loud and crude in their wine, some grave and determined as they talked of the war and ignored their food, others trying to get fresh with the waitresses or German secretaries. Nazi flags hung at each end of the room, and a large photograph of Hitler presided over the tables like the host of a party. The windows of the dining room faced the street; occasionally, I would notice someone pass by and pause for a moment, watching the Germans eat as though it were a rare and exotic spectacle, before turning away and hurrying on.

  November came, and with it the cold, the low gray sky, and the snow. Schulz took me with him to the Wehrmacht's Warenhaus, the warehouse stuffed with the contents of countless raided shops and homes, and helped me pick out a pair of warm winter boots so that my walks to and from the old hotel would not freeze my feet. I went to work the next day in good spirits: My feet were warm, the sky was blue, and the snow was as white as the powdered sugar on one of Schulz's sacher tortes. I was almost happy.

  “Guten Morgen, Fräulein Irene,” Schulz called as I came in, stamping snow from my boots.

  “Dzien dobry, Pan Schulz,” I replied in Polish.

  “Today, I need you to set the tables in the ballroom upstairs for a formal dinner,” he said. He was rolling pastry dough and was dusted with flour up to his elbows. He jerked his chin upward. “All the silver and linens are there already.”

  I tied on my apron and threaded my way through the labyrinthine passages that made up the behind-the-scenes area of the hotel, then up the creaking service elevator to the fourth floor. The plush red carpeting of the upstairs lobby felt soft underfoot, and the daylight sent rainbows from the prisms of the chandeliers. In the ballroom, I walked to a window to let in some more light. The velvet drapes released a slight shower of dust as I threw them open.

  I glanced out. The ballroom was at the rear of the hotel, and I realized I had never looked out that side of the building. The view showed me just more city, although I noticed that a wooden fence topped with barbed wire ran directly in back of the hotel. Then I understood. Beyond the barbed wire was the Glinice ghetto.

  At first, the place seemed deserted, the way the woods do when you first enter in the winter. In the woods, you see nothing but trees, the tops of creeping plants, shapes muffled by snow. But little by little, you notice a cuckoo dipping its tail in a ray of sunlight, or you hear the footfall of a deer as it paws through the crust to reach moss to eat. The ghetto was the same; at first, it looked like nothing but empty streets dark with scabs of dirty snow and slush. Then, gradually, I began to notice people: two children, hand in hand, picking their way across a patch of ice; an old Hasidic man with side-curls locking a door behind him; a woman carrying a basket across the street.

  The brightness faded from my day. I had forgotten the Jews, driven from their homes, crowded into the ghetto. I was sure they were worse off even than the rest of us Poles. I had sometimes overheard officers talking during dinner of the “Jewish problem,” but I had always been too busy working to pay much heed—and to be honest, too worried about my own problems to think about the Jews. Now I berated myself for the good food I had eaten and given my family, for feeling so lucky, so well-fed. I watched the old Hasid, stepping as carefully as a stork through the slush, turn a corner and disappear.

  A voice from down the hall made me jump, and I hurried to set the tables. There were dozens of places to set, and for an hour I was busy folding napkins and laying the silver. The hotel was as hushed as a church.

  Then, the sound of gunfire broke into the quiet ballroom. Still clutching a handful of knives, I ran to the window to see what on earth was happening.

  The scene below me was like an anthill kicked to pieces. Men, women, and children were running through the streets. SS men were spilling out of trucks and shooting at the fleeing Jews. Bodies were sprawled in the slush. Through the glass I heard faint screams and the frenzied barking of police dogs. The snow darkened with blood. I was squeezing the knives so sharply that one of them bit into my hand, and when I dropped them they clattered loudly on the floor. I stared at my hand, where a thin line of blood welled up from a cut. It was not real. This could not be real. I looked from my hand to the scene of murder outside and felt a scream rising in me as though I had been shot myself.

  A hand clamped down over my mouth. I whirled around, struggling. Schulz was holding on to me, shaking his head. He was deathly pale.

  “Be quiet, Irene!”

&nbs
p; He took his hand away to pull the drapes shut and dragged me away from the window.

  “Schulz! What is happening?” I wailed. I was nearly hysterical, and tried to go back to see.

  He pressed my hands between his and forced me to look at him. There was a line of sweat on his upper lip. “Don't, Irene. You never saw this.”

  “But they're kill—”

  “Don't speak of it to anyone. Don't cry—they will think you are a Jew-lover.”

  I stared at him. I could not understand what he was saying.

  “Irene. Bad things happen to Jew-lovers. Do you understand me? Very bad.”

  Slowly, slowly, I nodded. My neck felt stiff and rusty, as though it might break.

  Schulz sent a nervous glance at the door. I could feel his hands trembling even as he tried to control mine, and he was breathing unevenly.

  “You won't be fit to serve today,” he whispered. “Go home. I will say—I will say that you are sick. But you must come back tomorrow at the usual time. And you must tell yourself you never saw this. Now go.”

  He shook me slightly, and then pushed me toward the door. “Go.”

  I had just seen the Germans’ answer to their “Jewish problem.”

  A Drop in the Ocean

  When I returned to work the next day, I could not look at Schulz. As good and kind as he was, he was a German, and I could not reconcile those two things in my mind. I was so confused and heartsick that I could barely speak. I went about my duties with the deadness of a machine. My skin prickled constantly throughout the day, as though the presence of the ghetto beyond the hotel was making itself known to me. I had to do something.

  During the afternoon, while cleaning up from lunch, I found myself alone in the kitchen. It was the chance I had been waiting for. I took a pail of garbage from the floor beside me and stepped out into the alley. The alley ran from the street along the side of the hotel, dead-ending at a fence. The ghetto, I now knew, was on the other side. I glanced quickly out toward the street; cars passed, and two women walked by, muffled in heavy coats, but nobody looked my way.