Irena Gut Opdyke

IRENA GUT OPDYKE (May 5, 1918 – May 17, 2003) was born Irena Gut into a Catholic family in the town of Kozienice in Central Poland, and studied nursing. During the German occupation of western Poland and the Russian occupation in the east, Irena joined a Polish underground unit. She was spotted by Russian troops, beaten, raped, and forced to work in a Russian medical unit. She escaped, only to be captured later by the Germans and forced to work in a munitions plant. An elderly SS officer Eduard Rugemer arranged her transfer to lighter duties in an army mess hall, which happened to afford her both a direct view into a Jewish ghetto, and a chance to slip food under its fence. When Rugemer was reassigned to Lvov and then Tarnopol (in what is now Ukraine), he requisitioned Irena as his housekeeper. There she supervised a laundry staffed by Jews, and when she heard that they were to be transported to a death camp, she undertook to hide 12 of them in Rugemer’s own villa and provide them with food and clothing. At a displaced persons camp after the war, Irena Gut met her future husband, a U.N. staffer named William Opdyke. They settled in Southern California, where she became an interior decorator. She did not talk about the war until she got a phone call as part of a survey on how many people doubted that the Holocaust ever happened. She began telling her story in schools, and in 1982 Irena Gut Opdyke was named by the Israeli Holocaust Commission as one of the Righteous Among the Nations, a title given to gentiles who risked their lives by aiding and saving Jews during the Holocaust, and was presented with the Israel Medal of Honor (Israel’s highest tribute), in a ceremony at Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial. The Vatican has given her a special commendation, and her story is part of a permanent exhibit at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
The production is looking for relatives and descendants of the Jews Irena saved.
If you have any information, please email: IrenasVowSurvivors@gmail.com

Watch the play Irena's Vow