A new play has just opened dealing with the life of Irena Gut Opdyke, the Polish housekeeper who managed to hide thirteen Jews in the basement of the home belonging to Eduard Rugemer, the highest ranking Nazi in Tarnopol (now in Ukraine) during World War II.  It is an inspiring story of heroism, moral certainty and hope amidst despair.  Yet Irena’s Vow fails to do justice to its subject, except by virtue of bringing her story, and by extension, that of the six million Jews who weren’t saved, to our attention.

     Headed by Tovah Feldshuh, the play frequently descends to the level of farce as Irena has to shuttle her stowaways between the cellar and the attic, uses them to prepare for a dinner party that seemingly allows her to do the work of an entire staff single-handedly, and repeatedly plays to the audience with increasing shtick (eye rolling and signing the cross).  The scene in which Irena refuses to assist in an abortion is similarly played for nervous laughs as she insists that God has guided her and one of the characters asks whether she can get HIM on the phone or ask to write something that they all can witness.  There is the requisite lighting of the menorah as the Jews chant the blessings in a determined voice - another bit lifted from other holocaust dramas too numerous to mention.  Despite these caveats, the play is worth seeing because Irena’s story is little known and well worth disseminating.  When the war ended, she came to the U.S., married a U.N. staffer and raised a daughter in California.  How she was rescued from imprisonment for collaboration with the Nazis, her reunion with the people she saved and her many honors from the Israeli government and the Vatican are enough material for two lifelines and another play.

     After the performance ended, Tovah Feldshuh announced that there would be a Q & A with the Polish Cultural Minister who was in the audience, along with Irena’s daughter Jeanie, and one of the hidden survivors, the baby whom she refused to abort - now a man in his late sixties.  As moderator, Ms. Feldshuh was playing to the typical 92nd Street Y crowd and got ready laughs by reassuring the audience that the Polish Minister had not met with Sarah Palin nor gone sledding with Mr. Palin.  The questions directed to Irena’s daughter were typical of what people hear asked on Barbara Walters interviews:  how did your mother find the courage to do what she did;  how did you feel as a child who wasn’t told this story till her teens;  what role did faith play in guiding your mother’s actions and so on.  Finally, one man asked an actual pointed question of the Polish minister:  what awards had the Polish government established for heroic “bystanders” who had saved Jews at the peril of their own death.  Ms. Feldshuh immediately intercepted this by stressing what the Israeli government had done but it was clear that she did not want to embarrass the Polish Minister who reminded the audience that three million Polish Catholics were killed during the war.  He didn’t mention that Poles killed partisans during the war, considering the Jews as much their enemies as the Germans.  He omitted mention of the massacre of Jews in Kielce in 1946 and he never addressed the expulsion of more than 20,000 Jews from Poland in 1968.

     The moral of this play is the crucial imperative for bystanders to oppose tyranny, to speak out and to be guided by morality rather than fear.  Ironically, the play opened during the week of Ahmadinejad’s visit to the U.N. where he blamed the greedy and aggressive Zionists for the world economic crisis.  He has been feted with various dinners hosted by American students and professors, American Quakers and religious fellowships and American talk show hosts.  Larry King asked about his children and mused about how young he looks to already have married children.  Ahmadinejad is this generation’s Hitler, a world leader who openly repudiates the existence of the holocaust and openly vows to destroy Israel and all Jews.  Yet Ms. Feldshuh never referred to him in her introductory remarks, missing the unique opportunity to draw the parallel between Irena’s time and our own.  There was a rally of “bystanders” this week - one in which an invited governor was prepared to speak out forcefully and unequivocally in a speech that was subsequently printed in the newspapers.  Unfortunately, she was of the wrong political party for Jewish people and after Hillary Clinton refused to stand for this cause if it meant standing next to a reviled Republican - at the behest of the Obama campaign, Sarah Palin was dis-invited.  Strangely, we were never told what political allegiance Irena Gut Opdyke held during those years in which she let her conscience and her faith dictate her actions.

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