Why I Write

by "Irene Gut Opdyke"

Sitting at an empty dinner table, stripped of the cloth used to cover it - with a red and white background and the Polski orzeł, Polish eagle, neatly stitched by Mamusia - my sisters and I helped make pierogi with nothing but our bare hands. We made hundreds a day, pushing patterns and folding circles into crescents of dough, cheese and potatoes. Back then, I never thought I would be a writer. I spent many years of my life being everything but. I was just a girl, a nurse, a Catholic, a patriot, a rescuer, a friend, a wife, and a mother. My roles have shaped me in many ways, but I knew it was my turn to shape the truth in my own hands. With this in mind, I wrote.

I write because of ignorance. Not my own, but that of others. I fear that one day my story will lose its voice and be taken over by those who do not know, those who deny, those who cannot tell the whole truth. This lost voice, I back up on paper. I write with detail, emotion, and fervor; I write for permanence.

I do not write for myself. My story is not about me, or for me, although I label it so. It is for the lives I was meant to protect, the lives that through the grace of God, I saved. It is for Mamusia and Tatuś, for my sisters, for the Poles, the Jews, even for the Russians and Germans. It is for anyone who is willing to listen.

I write to remember what I'm hoping to forget. Babies torn from the hands of mothers and thrown away, their pulp coloring the ground, two straight lines of Jews and Poles, handpicked by the Nazis and labeled "traitors," a mysterious trench dug deep in the forest, swollen from the number of bodies it must hide. I write because there are no more reasons to hide.

I've been recognized as brave, rebellious, and somewhat of a hero. But I am just a woman. One who's seen evil and put her foot down to force it to the ground. I am just a woman who told the truth. My story is my truth, their truth,

and I hope it will be your truth. Jak pozwolicie. If you let it.

Z Bogiem. Go With God.