In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer by Irene Opdyke

In My Hands is a truly amazing, if at times gut wrenching, book. Irene is a 17 year old nursing student in Poland in the late 1930s. When the Germans and Russians invade, at the start of WWII, splitting Poland down the middle she is thrown in a horrible situation where most people, let alone a young innocent girl would have given up. She goes through so many horrors, including gang rape from Russian soldiers, where she was almost beaten to death but somehow survives. When the Russians and Germans break the treaty and all out war begins with Poland being pushed and pulled between them she ends up running to the German side to try to find her family only to realize that her nightmare had just started. She watches while Jewish men, women, and children, are shot down in the street and murdered right outside the hotel where she is working for the SS and Gestapo. She decides she is through just watching and doing nothing, even if she is "just a girl", she begins feeding, hiding, and doing anything she can and risking everything she has to help them. This is the true story of an unbelievably courageous woman who put her life at risk every day for other people. This book might be ok for teens to read but I think it is a little too much for under 12 to handle. Too much death and torture, and a horrible scene with a baby that was so bad even Irene couldn't really grasp it after everything she had seen. It leaves you in wonder of how people could still have hope and not give up after all this, and how one young girl could possibly have so much courage.