{"id":762,"date":"2009-03-15T16:23:22","date_gmt":"2009-03-15T16:23:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/03\/irenas-vow-catholic-heroism-an.html"},"modified":"2009-03-15T16:23:22","modified_gmt":"2009-03-15T16:23:22","slug":"irenas-vow-catholic-heroism-an","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/03\/irenas-vow-catholic-heroism-an.html","title":{"rendered":"Irena&#8217;s Vow, Catholic Heroism, and God&#8217;s Winks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/imgs\/Irena%20gut%20Opdyke%202.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Irena gut Opdyke 2.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/128\/import\/assets_c\/2009\/03\/Irena gut Opdyke 2-thumb-185x360-3753.jpg\" width=\"185\" height=\"360\" class=\"mt-image-left\" style=\"float: left;margin: 0 20px 20px 0\" \/><\/a><\/span>Earlier this week I watched <a href=\"http:\/\/irenasvow.com\/aboutirena\">Irena&#8217;s Vow<\/a>, a powerful play based on the true story of a Polish woman, Irena Gut, who hid a dozen Jews during the war, including six in the basement of a high-level German officer.  A pious Catholic, Gut had seen a mother and baby murdered by the Nazis and made her vow to help save whomever she could.  She had to submit to being the German officer&#8217;s mistress, among other things, to save these lives.<br \/>\nThe most famous &#8220;righteous gentiles&#8221; &#8212; Oskar Schindler, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Raoul Wallenberg &#8212; have been Protestants, while much has been written arguing that the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Popes-Against-Jews-Vaticans-Anti-Semitism\/dp\/B000XUBE16\/ref=pd_sim_kinc_2\">Catholic Church laid the groundwork for anti-semitism<\/a>.  It&#8217;s important to highlight the Catholics who helped Jews at tremendous personal risk.<br \/>\nAt the end of this performance, the actress who played Irena, Tovah Feldshuh, announced they had a special guest: Irena Gut&#8217;s daughter. In the course of answering questions from the audience, Gut was asked how old she was when her mother told her the story.  Fourteen, the daughter said.  Irena had sealed off these memories.<br \/>\nOne day, she said, someone called doing a survey for a paper about how the holocaust didn&#8217;t happen.   The caller, according to the daughter, seemed sympathetic to the view.  That prompted Irena to unload her story, first to the caller, then to her family &#8212; and then to audiences around the world.<br \/>\nI kept thinking about that phone call that triggered her public witness.  Coincidence? <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Synchronicity\">Synchronicity?<\/a>  Or, what my friend SQuire Rushnell calls a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.whengodwinks.com\/\">&#8220;God wink<\/a>&#8220;?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Earlier this week I watched Irena&#8217;s Vow, a powerful play based on the true story of a Polish woman, Irena Gut, who hid a dozen Jews during the war, including six in the basement of a high-level German officer. A pious Catholic, Gut had seen a mother and baby murdered by the Nazis and made&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Irena&#039;s Vow, Catholic Heroism, and God&#039;s Winks - Steven Waldman<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/03\/irenas-vow-catholic-heroism-an.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Irena&#039;s Vow, Catholic Heroism, and God&#039;s Winks - Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Earlier this week I watched Irena&#8217;s Vow, a powerful play based on the true story of a Polish woman, Irena Gut, who hid a dozen Jews during the war, including six in the basement of a high-level German officer. A pious Catholic, Gut had seen a mother and baby murdered by the Nazis and made&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/03\/irenas-vow-catholic-heroism-an.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-03-15T16:23:22+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"swaldman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Irena's Vow, Catholic Heroism, and God's Winks - Steven Waldman","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/03\/irenas-vow-catholic-heroism-an.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Irena's Vow, Catholic Heroism, and God's Winks - Steven Waldman","og_description":"Earlier this week I watched Irena&#8217;s Vow, a powerful play based on the true story of a Polish woman, Irena Gut, who hid a dozen Jews during the war, including six in the basement of a high-level German officer. 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He's also the author of the Founding Faith: Politics, Providence, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America, which has been published by Random House. Before co-founding Beliefnet in 1999, Waldman was a political journalist, serving as National Editor of U.S. News & World Report and National Correspondent for Newsweek. 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