Description: In this intimate and compelling memoir lies a true hero. Irene Gut was just a girl when the war began: seventeen, a Polish patriot, a good Catholic girl. As the war progressed, it stripped her of all she loved -- her family, her home, her innocence -- but the degradations only strengthened her will. Forced to work for the German army, Irene's blond hair, blue eyes, and youth bought her the relatively safe job of waitress in an officers' dining room. She used this Aryan mask as both a shield and a sword: She picked up snatches of conversation along with the Nazis' dirty dishes and passed the information to Jews in the ghetto, along with food and blankets. She smuggled people from the work camp into the forest. And, when she was made housekeeper of a Nazi major, she successfully hid twelve Jews in the basement of his home until the Germans' defeat. This powerless young woman was determined to deliver her friends from evil: It was as simple and impossible as that.

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