Mom, The Holocaust Rescuer
March 2014 | Colette Wilkinson
It was almost lunchtime. The school children shuffling into the auditorium were getting fidgety after their cross-country bus ride.
They slid around, finding the best seat, and they beckoned friends to come sit near them. They chatted and giggled and shrieked. They probably hadn’t noticed the Jewish Talmudic inscription just below the ceiling: “He who saves a single life saves the world entire” (Babylonian Talmud: Tractate Sanhedrin 37), nor the hundreds of aging books lining the walls. They probably had a hundred places they would rather be than the National Holocaust Center on a dreary Thursday.
Twenty minutes later, the fidgets were forgotten and all faces stared forward. When the strawberry-blond speaker on stage paused to take a sip of water, not a single body in the audience moved. The woman held her audience for another 45 minutes, then thanked them and walked off stage to loud applause. A few minutes later, five girls lined up in front of her. One blew her nose. Then the girls all hugged her in turn.
***
Strawberry-blond haired Jeannie Smith had been telling the audience stories of her late mother, Irene Gut Opdyke, a native of Poland.
“My mother was a tiny woman, up to about here,” said Smith, holding her hand to her shoulder. “And she sounded like Zsa Zsa Gabor.
“Good morning my darlings childrens,” Smith said mimicking her mother’s East European accent. Her warm smile rippled through the faces watching her.
Until the age of 14, Smith knew her mother as an interior decorator. One evening she overheard her mother answer the phone to a college student who was conducting a survey on whether or not the Holocaust ever actually happened. He was calling random people and wanted to find out what Opdyke thought.
“He found out,” said Smith. “And so did I.”
They learned how her mother, as a young Catholic nurse, had joined the Polish resistance following invasions by both the Nazis and the Soviets in 1939. How she braved the brutal winter living with the partisans in the woods. How she was captured by Russian soldiers, and was beaten, raped and left for dead in the snow. How she ran away from hospital following a lengthy recovery only to witness Nazi German soldiers herding people, with Star of David bands on their arms, toward a field like cattle. How she saw one of the soldiers grab a tiny baby from the arms of its young mother, throw it in the air and shoot it. How she hid behind a fence and watched parents cover the eyes of their children as the soldiers shot them all. How she thought the ones killed instantly were lucky because the ground moved for hours with those who were buried alive.
They heard how she was later forced to work and become a mistress for a high-ranking German soldier, Major Eduard Rügemer. How she had hidden 12 Jews in Rügemer’s basement and sneaked them food and supplies to ensure their survival. And how, in 1944, she smuggled them into the forest where they were finally free.
After moving to the U.S. to begin a new life, Opdyke dimmed her memories, but upon hearing that a young college student had been brainwashed into thinking the Holocaust never happened, she realized that if people like her didn’t speak out and educate people, history would continue to repeat itself.
Opdyke went on to publish her autobiography, In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer, and began to accept speaking engagements, bringing home the message that—be it against genocide, abuse or bullying—one person can make a difference.
***
As the last member of the audience leaves, Jeannie Smith relaxes in the small café attached to the National Holocaust Center. A smile creeps across her face as she speaks fondly of the schoolgirls who had hugged her. Setting her coffee cup down, she crosses her arms over her chest in an imaginary cuddle.
“I just want to take them all home with me,” she says.
“No, Jeannie, you can’t,” says Chantelle Thornley, sitting opposite and smiling. “It’s against the law.”
Thornley is the U.K. director of Irena’s Vow, a play by Dan Gordon retelling the story of Opdyke’s holocaust rescue. Previously performed on Broadway, it premiered in Europe in February 2014, and Smith traveled to the U.K. to stay with Thornley during the play’s two-week run. She had given talks after each production, as she had done today.
Despite her easy rapport with the schoolgirls, Smith describes herself as “more the reserved American” compared to her European mother, who was “touchy, feely, huggy.”
“I really try,” says Smith. “I pray actually.”
Has becoming the teller of her mother’s story helped?
“Oh absolutely,” says Smith, explaining that just days before, she and Thornley had been on a train that stopped suddenly, due to problems ahead. Smith saw a woman who was having an anxiety attack, frantically trying to call her husband, convinced that she was going to die.
“The logical part of me wanted to say: ‘Are you serious?’ But I just hugged her and stood with her.” Smith says. “I don’t think I would have done that before.”
It’s difficult to imagine Smith falling short on emotion. Regardless of how many times she tells the story—always from memory— her clear, confident tone cracks at times. She pauses to take deep breaths or dab her eyes.
“I never ever, ever, ever thought I would do this,” says Smith, shaking her head.
When Opdyke passed away in 2003, Smith found her diary with almost 60 upcoming speaking engagements. Devastated at the thought of letting those people down, Smith gradually began to take the stage and become her mother’s voice.
But on one topic, Smith cannot answer for her mother: how does one find the strength to do what she did back in Poland?
“I honestly don’t know," says Smith. She pauses. “But I do think it starts at home. You influence your kids in every way. Parents have a huge responsibility to teach compassion.”
A 55-year-old mother of two, and grandmother of three, Smith is no stranger to parenting. Over the last 25 years, she and her husband, Gary, have also opened their home in Washington State to various young people who have been victims of abuse.
“It’s tense,” says Smith, nodding gently. “We’ve had some horrendous things. We’ve been stolen from.”
But rather than linger on the details, Smith talks energetically of the “young stuff” she gets to do with the kids: scuba diving, four wheeling, jet skiing, horseback riding and snowboarding.
“We’ve learned to hold our things like this,” says Smith, holding her palms out in front of her. “It can come, it can go. Whatever is ours, give it away.”
