In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer

On the first page of her memoir, Irene Gut Opdyke says, “If I tell you [about the war] all at once—first this happened, and then this, and these people died and those people lived and then it was over—you will not believe me” (1). Since she can’t reveal the terrible things that happened “all at once,” how does Opdyke recount her story? What literary devices does she use to convey horrors that, at times, seem unspeakable? Do Opdyke’s storytelling choices make her message more or less effective?

In the first chapter of her memoir, Opdyke says that as a child, she visited the Black Madonna icon and believed that with this Holy Mother as a guardian, “Poland would never fall” (11). How does Irena’s view of religion, and particularly of God’s ability to protect her and her country, shift throughout the memoir? How does religion help and/or hinder Irena in her quest to save lives?

Throughout her memoir, Opdyke returns to the particularly horrific image of a German soldier shooting a Jewish baby. How does Opdyke first present this image, and how does the image change through the memoir? What does this shifting vision illustrate about Irena’s struggle to reconcile and overcome the horrors she’s witnessed?