In My Hands by Irene Gut Opdyke

"I was only a girl, alone among the enemy.

What could I do?"

Irene Gut was only seventeen when Poland was invaded by Germany on the West and Russia on the East. Separated from her family, raped by Russian soldiers, and then forced to work for the German army, she found a way not only to survive, but to fight back. She snuck food into the Jewish ghetto, passed on information she overheard from the German officers she served, and managed to hide twelve Jews from the SS in the basement of the house where she worked. She even fought with the Polish Resistance. Her memoir is an amazing story of survival, courage, and sheer grit, and shows what World War II was like through the eyes and heart of a young Polish girl caught between countless enemies who refused to give up. It's honest and moving and several parts made me cry; I read it all in just one day and loved every single word. Irene Gut is such an inspiring person and her story is a truly memorable one. This is one book that's definitely going on my list of favorite reads in 2018!

"The war was a series of choices made by many people. Some of those choices were as wicked and shameful to humanity as anything in history. But some of us made other choices. I made mine. ... I did not ask myself, Should I do this? But, How will I do this? Every step of my childhood had brought me to this crossroad; I must take the right path, or I would no longer be myself. You must understand that I did not become a resistance fighter, a smuggler of Jews, a defier of the SS and the Nazis, all at once. One's first steps are always small:  I had begun by hiding food under a fence."

 Happy Reading!

 

Another Favorite Read...

The Girl in the Green Sweater by Krystyna Chiger

Krystyna Chiger is just a child when Poland is overrun, first by the Russians, then by the Germans. The Russians take away her father's business; the Germans take away their home and all their possessions. Before the Nazis can take away their lives, Krystyna and her family escape to the safety of Lvov's sewer tunnels, along with several other Jews.

None of these Jews would have survived the war without the help of Leopold Socha and two other Polish sewer workers. These men find them safe places in the sewers to hide, and they bring them food and other necessary supplies. At first, the Polish men charge the group 500 zlotys a day (about $100), but when their money runs out, Socha finds he cannot simply abandon them. In fact, saving Krystyna and her family becomes Socha's own quest for redemption. And when the war is over and they finally emerge from the sewers, Socha proudly announces to all the amazed Poles watching these thin and ragged survivors rising from the darkness, "These are my Jews. This is my work!"

This book made me cry. It's such an amazing story of friendship, miracles, hope, and survival. I'm glad so many survivors of World War II and the Holocaust have written down their stories so that we can read them. This is one of my favorite books from that time period. For me, this book is a definite must-read! I hope you read it, and think so, too.

Happy Reading!

Similar reads:

     The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom

     Prisoner B-3087 by Alan Gratz

Prisoner B-3087

The Jewish ghetto, the Wieliczka salt mine, concentration camps, death camps, the gas chamber, a death march ... Birkenau, Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau ... No one could survive them all.  Yet somehow Yanek Gruener did.

Sound unrealistic and unbelievable?  It's not.  Although Prisoner B-3087 by Alan Gratz is a fictionalized YA novel, it is based on the true life story of Jack Gruener, who at the age of 13 decided that he was not going to die at the hand of the Nazis.

"In the place of my pain, I felt the stirring of determination.

I would not give up.  I would not turn myself in.  No matter

what the Nazis did to me, no matter what they took from me,

I would survive."

And he did.

I loved this book.  Like The Hiding Place and The Diary of Anne Frank, this is a book everyone should read.  It's that good.

Other, similar books you might want to check out:  Destined to Live by Ruth Gruener and The Girl in the Green Sweater by Krystyna Chiger.  Both are amazing stories of hope and survival.