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Through this intimate and compelling memoir, we are witness to the growth of a hero. Irene Gut was just a girl when the war began: seventeen, a Polilsh patriot, a student nurse, a good Catholic girl. As the war progressed, the soldiers of two countries stripped her of all she loved--her family, her home, her innocence--but the degradation only strengthened her will. She began to fight back. Irene was forced to work for the German army, but her blond hair, blue eyes, and youth brought her the relatively safe job of waitress in an officer's dining room. She picked up snatches of conversation along with the Nazis' dirty dishes and passed the information to Jews. She raided the German Warenhaus for food and blankets. She smuggled people from the work camp into the forest. And, when she was made housekeeper for a Nazi major, she successfully hid 12 Jews in the basement of his home until the Germans' defeat. This young woman was determined to deliver her friends from evil. It was as simple and impossible as that.
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