A young woman displays extraordinary courage in ‘Irena’s Vow’ - review

‘What does it matter who we are? What we do is who we are,” says Irena Gut Opdyke (Sophie Nelisse, who appeared in Yellowjackets and The Book Thief), the heroine of Irena’s Vow, a stirring new movie about a young Polish Catholic woman who saved Jews during the Holocaust, which will be in theaters on April 15 and 16 in a number of US cities and will later be available on VOD platforms, and will presumably get an Israeli release eventually. 

It plays a bit like We Were the Lucky Ones and takes place at the same time and in some of the same places as that series.  Irena’s Vow creates a similar sense of urgency as we watch in awe while Irena, who never wanted to do anything out of the ordinary, discovers she possesses extraordinary courage when circumstances demand it. 

Directed by Louise Archambault (One Summer) and written by Israeli-American screenwriter, Dan Gordon, best known for The Hurricane, it starts when Irena, a devoutly Catholic Polish nursing student, learns that Germany and Russia have divided up her country following a missile attack on the hospital where she was working.

The plot of the movie

She rushes home to find a German officer living there and no sign of her mother. Forced to work in an arms factory, grueling labor she can barely handle, she is transferred to domestic work by a Nazi officer who senses she is a person of substance who can handle responsibility. 

One of the tasks she is given is to supervise a group of Jewish young people who are supposed to be working as tailors, although she is given to understand they may have exaggerated their sewing skills in order to get this coveted job. 

Her supervisor advises her that the best way to survive is to literally keep her head down and only look at the floor, but she is a kind, decent person and gets to know these Jews, discovering that they have many professions, such as music teacher, lawyer, and doctor, but that only a couple have any sewing skills. 

As she works as a housekeeper and supervises them, an incident happens that changes the course of her life. She witnesses a Nazi murder a baby and its mother in the street, in a graphic and disturbing scene. 

Around that time, she learns that the Nazis are planning to implement the Final Solution and will soon be killing all the Jews – and decides to find a place to hide them. When she gets the job as a housekeeper to another Nazi, Rugmer (Dougray Scott), she suddenly crafts a plan so crazy it just might work – hiding the Jews from the tailoring workshop in the Nazi officer’s home. 

I had really thought I had heard just about every Holocaust story, but this true tale of Jews hidden just a few feet away from a Nazi was new to me and provides all kinds of suspenseful moments.

There’s also some black humor, such as when Irena, who insists to her boss she can do the work all on her own – she does not want Rugmer to get her an assistant who could turn her in – has to prepare and serve all the food for a large dinner party, with the Jews cooking secretly and arranging the hors d’oeuvres in high-society style. 

But the most fascinating aspect, as it always is in such stories, is what makes Irena tick, what inspires her to take such heroic actions, especially given that most Catholics stood by or collaborated with the Nazis. In the most moving scene, she tries to explain her motivations to the Jews, when one of them is pregnant and asks her to get the materials they need for an abortion, so the baby’s cries won’t endanger them. 

Irena is opposed to abortion, she explains: “This is not just a matter of religion. I saw a baby ripped out of its mother’s arms and killed in front of me and I could do nothing. I made a vow then that if I could ever save a life, I would. That’s why, without even thinking, I took you here to hide you. 

It’s not just enough to save a life, to simply survive. We have to live! Otherwise, the Hitlers of the world have won. Ida, if there was no Hitler, no camps, no SS, no Major Rugmer, would you have this baby?” The woman answers yes, and Irena says,  “Then I’m not going to help Hitler get another Jewish baby. 

He won’t get rid of you. Of us... I think we should have the baby. Because if we don’t, something will die inside of us, too.” A man says, “But if anything goes wrong, we will all pay the price,” and another answers, “Everything already has gone wrong, and we are still here.”

This movie also to brought to mind A Small Light, the series about Miep Gies, another seemingly ordinary young woman who risked her life to hide Anne Frank and her family. 

One thing that many of these heroes have in common is that they are affectionate and impulsive people. If someone is kind to them, they will show kindness in return, no matter that their kindness can cost them their lives. 

Irena’s Vow gives us a look into the life of the kind of person we all hope we would be if we found ourselves tested like this. Irena was honored in her lifetime, she was included as one of the Righteous Among the Nations, was a recipient of the Israel Medal of Honor, and published a memoir that now has very deservedly been brought to the screen.