There are some books whose words and images will remain in your mind, your heart, forever. This is one of them.

Irene Gut was a young nursing student in Ramdon when the Germans invaded Poland.

Before I even saw the planes, I began to hear explosions, and then there they were—the sky was black with them: row after row of German bombers, flying in formation over Ramdon. Even as I covered my ears against the roar, I felt the earth shaking with detonations.

She was able to make her way to the Red Cross hospital, where the wounded began to arrive in huge numbers. As the Germans started to advance, the badly outnumbered Polish troops began to retreat. They needed doctors and nurses to accompany them. Irene volunteered. Thus began a journey that would take her and the "ragtag army-without-a-country into the Lithuanian forest."

One evening, while standing as lookout, Irene was spotted by a Russian patrol. The soldiers caught, beat her, and raped her, ultimately leaving her for dead "under the frozen stars, with the dark forest keeping watch" over her death.

But she did not die. Another patrol found her and took her to a Russian hospital in Ternopol. Although Irene was a prisoner, she was put to work in the understaffed hospital.

Irene slowly regained some of her strength and learned to speak Russian. Not long after, the hospital administrator was replaced by one Dr. Ksydzof. When he found out that Irene had been a nurse of the renegade Polish army, he began to make her life miserable. One night, he came to her cot and tried to force himself on her. Irene grabbed a heavy glass bottle and knocked him out. Thinking she had killed him (she had actually only knocked him out), she ran to the emergency room in desperation and told Dr. David—a kindly Ukrainian Pole—about the incident. Knowing that Irene could no longer stay at the hospital, he made arrangements for a friend, Miriam, to take her in. But first Irene had to escape the hospital grounds and make her way to Svetlana.

After a year in Svetlana, Irene learned that the Communists were going to allow Polish families who had been torn apart because of the war to be reunited. But this would necessitate a return to Ternopol. Once there, she nearly made it onto the train that would reunite her with her family. Unfortunately, she was recognized by a Russian patrol and taken into custody. Eventually, she was able to escape, and suffering much hardship, finally made her way to Ramdon—German occupied territory—where she found her family.

Life was quite harsh for the Poles in Ramdon. Food and clothing were scarce. Irene was forced to work for the Third Reich. At first she packed ammunition. When she collapsed on the factory floor one day, she was noticed by a Major Rügemer. Because Irene was able to speak both Polish and German, the major sent her to work in the kitchen of a hotel which served meals to the German officers. It was there that Irene came to understand the Nazi's evil intent toward the Jews.

Irene began to help the Jewish people confined to a Ghetto near the hotel by leaving scraps of food under the fence. When she overheard German officers talking about "actions" against the Jews, she was able to warn them.

Eventually, Major Rügemer moved Irene into a villa to act as his housekeeper. It was there that she hid twelve Jews in the basement.

When the Russians began to advance and the Germans retreated, Irene joined the Polish resistance. Eventually, the long war came to an end.

In the summer of 1949, a delegation from the United Nations visited the village in which she was living. When the U.N. delegate learned what she had done, he arranged for her to immigrate to the United States. It was here, in America, that Irene made a new life for herself.

At times the narrative is almost heart-stopping in its descriptions of the horrors the Jewish people faced. At one point, for example, Irene witnesses Jewish prisoners being transported to a camp:

The gates were dragged open, and [they] 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 . . . The streets were paved with bodies, and still the Jews were forced to march out over them.

. . . 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.

But it was not a bird. It was not a bird. It was not a bird.

The line between good and evil, however, was not always so clear. Herr Shulz, Irena’s boss in the kitchen, realizes what Irena is doing and yet says nothing. Indeed, he even offers her a stack of blankets on one particularly cold day. Irena writes:

And when Major Rügemer realizes Irene is hiding Jews in his basement, he says nothing, but in return for his silence, makes Irene his mistress.

In My Hands is an extraordinary autobiography, filled with as much tension and drama as a suspense novel. Irena Gut shines a brilliant and piercing light on the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust. But readers will also find among its pages acts of incredible courage and compassion. No one who reads this book can remain unaffected by its truth.

Highly recommended. District-wide purchase strongly encouraged.

Reviewed by K.J. Wagner, Education Oasis