https://padlet.com/daniel_durbin/7owejxwowqdb en-us 2018-12-05 15:53:29 UTC 2025-10-23 03:41:05 UTC hello@padlet.com daniel_durbin https://padlet.com/daniel_durbin/7owejxwowqdb/wish/313007673 “Irene was a teenager when the Nazi attack Poland changed her life forever. She was separated from her family, escaped twice from incarceration, and was captured and raped by Soviet soldiers. Her most difficult predicament was also her noblest: she saved the lives of 16 Polish Jews, hiding some of them literally beneath the noses of the German officers.”

]]> 2018-12-10 16:19:17 UTC https://padlet.com/daniel_durbin/7owejxwowqdb/wish/313007673 daniel_durbin https://padlet.com/daniel_durbin/7owejxwowqdb/wish/313008150           She would put leftovers in box and leave them just inside the ghetto fence. She did this despite proclamations thatanyone caught aiding a Jew would be put to death.
  Also in the course of her duties, Irene met Jewish workers in the hotel laundry room. She began helping them by giving them extra food and blankets, and recommending them for work in the kitchen, witch doesnt seem like much but back then it was a huge deal.]]> 2018-12-10 16:20:00 UTC https://padlet.com/daniel_durbin/7owejxwowqdb/wish/313008150 daniel_durbin https://padlet.com/daniel_durbin/7owejxwowqdb/wish/313892204 2018-12-12 15:45:47 UTC https://padlet.com/daniel_durbin/7owejxwowqdb/wish/313892204 daniel_durbin https://padlet.com/daniel_durbin/7owejxwowqdb/wish/313892593 Irene's activities ironicall began  with her own capture to serve as a slave. She had just returned to Radom from Ternopol where her ill treatment by the Soviet military had occurred. She was ultimately arrested while at church. German soldiers actually interrupted Mass and herded the parishioners into the streets. Irene was selected for labor and loaded in a truck with other prisoners. She was sent to work in a munitions factory, where she got sick. A German officer felt pity for her and gave her a position in the kitchen of a hotel.]]> 2018-12-12 15:46:22 UTC https://padlet.com/daniel_durbin/7owejxwowqdb/wish/313892593 daniel_durbin https://padlet.com/daniel_durbin/7owejxwowqdb/wish/313896880 It was at a hotel that that Irene observed firsthand the treatment the Jews recieved by the Nazis. One day, while waiting tables, she heard gunshots. She Looked through a window to observe what was happening, she saw soldiers shooting the unarmed ghetto inhabitants and turning attack dogs on them. Just as she was about to scream the German chef held his hand over her mouth. "Don't cry--they will think you are a Jew-lover," he warned. It was after this terrible mass murder that Irene began helping Jews.]]> 2018-12-12 15:53:27 UTC https://padlet.com/daniel_durbin/7owejxwowqdb/wish/313896880 daniel_durbin https://padlet.com/daniel_durbin/7owejxwowqdb/wish/313899037 2018-12-12 15:57:13 UTC https://padlet.com/daniel_durbin/7owejxwowqdb/wish/313899037 daniel_durbin https://padlet.com/daniel_durbin/7owejxwowqdb/wish/313900783 2018-12-12 16:00:06 UTC https://padlet.com/daniel_durbin/7owejxwowqdb/wish/313900783 daniel_durbin https://padlet.com/daniel_durbin/7owejxwowqdb/wish/313901478 Irene Gut did not plan on becoming a heroine. But she found herself in a position to help people that needed it. To say that her behavior was atypical of the Polish community is a generalization that overlooks the complex situation that existed in occupied Poland.]]> 2018-12-12 16:01:21 UTC https://padlet.com/daniel_durbin/7owejxwowqdb/wish/313901478 daniel_durbin https://padlet.com/daniel_durbin/7owejxwowqdb/wish/313902429 2018-12-12 16:02:50 UTC https://padlet.com/daniel_durbin/7owejxwowqdb/wish/313902429 daniel_durbin https://padlet.com/daniel_durbin/7owejxwowqdb/wish/313905597 When the advancing Soviet troops approached Ternopol, Irene was able to take her charges into the forest where they would be liberated. Through the efforts of one young Polish woman, who found herself in an unusual situation, Fanka Silberman, Henry Weinbaum, Moses Steiner, Marian Wilner, Joseph Weiss, Alex Rosen, David Rosen, Lazar Haller, Clara Bauer, Thomas Bauer, Abram Klinger, Miriam Morris, Hermann Morris, Herschel Morris, and Pola Morris were saved from the Nazi deathcamps.]]> 2018-12-12 16:08:16 UTC https://padlet.com/daniel_durbin/7owejxwowqdb/wish/313905597 daniel_durbin https://padlet.com/daniel_durbin/7owejxwowqdb/wish/313908489 Major Rugemer decided that he would live in in town. He requested the former home of a Jewish architect and appointed Irene to oversee the work. The villa turned out to be the perfect hiding place. Servants quarters were located in the basement and a bunker was accessible by the yard.

What happened next could have been the plot of a movie. A Nazi German officer lived at ease without knowing that Jews were hidding under his feet. At one point, Irene had to interrupt the visiting Rokita.

Eventually Major Rugemer found out. He came home one afternoon and discovered Fanka Silberman and Ida Bauer upstairs with Irene. He was angry but he was also trapped: it would not look good for a Nazi officer to have had Jews hiding in his own house. So Major Rugemer became an unlikely rescuer.]]> 2018-12-12 16:13:05 UTC https://padlet.com/daniel_durbin/7owejxwowqdb/wish/313908489 daniel_durbin https://padlet.com/daniel_durbin/7owejxwowqdb/wish/313911471 Irene drove six of the Jews, including Henry Weinbaum, who had not been killed in the raid, in a wagon, to the forest of Puszcza Janowska. Once safe in the forest, her contraband passengers escaped into its dark reaches. In the nearby town, Irene met a sympathetic Polish Catholic priest, Father Joseph. Later she met a Polish forester, Zygmunt Pasiewski, a former partisan, who would help her care for two of the Jewish ladies, one of whom, Ida Haller, would have a baby at his cottage.]]> 2018-12-12 16:18:06 UTC https://padlet.com/daniel_durbin/7owejxwowqdb/wish/313911471 daniel_durbin https://padlet.com/daniel_durbin/7owejxwowqdb/wish/313913012 2018-12-12 16:20:46 UTC https://padlet.com/daniel_durbin/7owejxwowqdb/wish/313913012