Germany bombs Radom and Irena rushes to St. Mary's Hospital to help treat the flood of wounded civilians and soldiers.

Irena volunteers to accompany the retreating Polish army as part of the medical staff, leaving the hospital behind.

Russian soldiers attack Irena during a bartering mission and rape her, leaving her for dead in the frozen snow.

A Russian patrol discovers Irena and takes her as a prisoner to a military hospital in Ternopol.

Irena escapes from the Russian hospital and makes her way back across the border into German-occupied Poland.

Irena successfully reaches Radom and reunites with her parents and older sister Janina at her aunt Helen's house.

German soldiers seize Irena during a church roundup and force her to work without pay in an ammunition factory.

Major Rügemer transfers Irena from the ammunition factory to serve as staff at a German officers' dining hall in Radom.

Relocated to Ternopol, Irena is placed in charge of a laundry facility staffed by twelve Jewish workers from a local camp.

Irena begins secretly eavesdropping on Sturmbannführer Rokita during mealtimes to gather information and warn her Jewish workers about raids.

Irena smuggles the Morris brothers and their wives out of Ternopol in a farm wagon and delivers them safely to the forest.

Major Rügemer asks Irena to be his housekeeper at a private villa, where she discovers the basement could hide her remaining workers.

Irena hides the six remaining laundry workers inside an air duct above the major's bathroom on the night before the final extermination order.

Major Rügemer discovers two Jewish women hiding in his villa and demands Irena become his mistress in exchange for keeping her secret.

As German forces retreat from Ternopol, Irena leads all her hidden Jewish friends safely into the forest, having brought them through the war alive.

This pool follows the headline events of Irena Gut's transformation from nursing student to Holocaust rescuer. Beginning with the German bombing of Poland and her capture by Russian forces, Irena endures brutal treatment before escaping and reuniting with her family in Radom. Forced into slave labor and then given a kitchen post by a German major, she gains access to the Jewish workers she oversees and begins risking her life to protect them. Her actions escalate from gathering intelligence to smuggling workers into the forests outside Ternopol and finally hiding ten people in the basement of a German officer's villa. Though she is ultimately forced to pay a devastating personal price to keep her secret safe, she succeeds in bringing every hidden friend alive through the war.

The core rescue arc from wartime displacement to saving twelve Jewish lives.

Irena enrolls as a nursing student at St. Mary's Hospital in Radom at sixteen, hoping to become a nurse and later a nun.

A Polish general announces that Germany and the Soviet Union have divided Poland, disbanding the army and leaving soldiers to fend for themselves.

A Russian hospital administrator named Dr. Ksydzof comes to Irena's bed at night; she strikes him with a glass bottle and fights him off.

A sympathetic doctor named Dr. David secretly arranges a hiding place and a train ticket so Irena can escape from the Ternopol hospital.

Irena spends nearly a year working at a small village clinic under a doctor named Miriam, waiting for a chance to return home.

Germany and the Soviet Union declare war on each other, prompting German soldiers to take Irena's father away to run a ceramics factory.

Irena's mother decides to take the three youngest sisters to live with Irena's father, leaving only Irena and Janina behind in Radom.

Irena persuades Herr Schulz to hire her sister Janina at the dining hall, so she can keep Janina close and protected.

While setting tables at the hotel, Irena looks into the Jewish ghetto through a window and watches German soldiers shoot at fleeing Jews.

Sheltering in an abandoned house near a labor camp, Irena watches a German officer fling a baby into the air and shoot it.

Irena befriends a Polish woman named Helen Weinbaum at a church in Lvov, learning that Helen's Jewish husband is imprisoned in a work camp.

After Rokita ogles Janina at a Christmas Eve party, Irena sends Janina back to Radom to protect her from the officer.

After delivering Jews to the forest, Irena stops at a church and meets Father Joseph, who urges his congregation to help Jews in hiding.

Irena steals Major Rügemer's keys while he sleeps, locks him in his room, and leads the hidden workers out to the villa.

A United Nations worker named William Opdyke hears Irena's story at a displaced persons camp in Germany and offers her American citizenship.

This pool traces the supporting events and relationships that gave shape to Irena's larger rescue mission. From her earliest years as a nursing student to the atrocities she witnesses in and around the Jewish ghettos, her sense of duty is forged through experience and loss. Key figures including Dr. David, the village doctor Miriam, Helen Weinbaum, and Father Joseph each play roles in sustaining Irena through impossible circumstances. The splitting of Irena's family, the protection of her sister Janina, and a Christmas Eve betrayal that costs two workers their lives show how personal stakes run alongside her larger mission. The pool closes at the story's true end, with Irena being offered a future in America after years of recovery in a displaced persons camp in Germany.

The people, moments, and moral horrors that shaped Irena's wartime journey.

As a teenager, Irena resolves to become a hero who saves lives and begins volunteering for the Red Cross.

Irena realizes her blonde hair, blue eyes, and German surname allow her to pose as a German national and cross the border.

Russian soldiers arrest Irena at a park in Ternopol, but she outsmarts the commissar during interrogation and escapes to the train station.

Janina shows Irena the barbed-wire Jewish ghetto in Radom for the first time, where all local Jews are now forced to live.

Irena secretly leaves cheese and apples through a hole under the ghetto fence—her first act of helping Jews despite the threat of death.

After a ghetto raid, Irena sneaks into the ghetto to find her worker Fanka Silberman and vows to protect Fanka from Rokita.

Irena, Janina, and Helen Weinbaum follow a column of Jewish prisoners from a work camp and hear gunshots confirming all have been killed.

During a meal service, Irena overhears Rokita announce Hitler's plan to make Ternopol completely free of Jews by an imminent deadline.

Irena drops a tray of dishes and resolves that saving her Jewish friends is entirely up to her alone.

SS officers arrive at the villa following a tip about hidden Jews but leave quickly after recognizing it belongs to Major Rügemer.

When Major Rügemer plans to move an orderly into the basement, Irena dissuades him by revealing she was raped by Russian soldiers.

A priest refuses to grant Irena absolution for being the major's mistress, but she chooses to continue protecting her friends regardless.

Irena meets partisan leader Janek Ridel and falls instantly in love; they become engaged and plan a wedding on Irena's birthday.

Janek is killed in a German ambush, and a suicidal Irena is pulled back from despair by a priest named Father Tadeusz.

Irena discovers her father has been killed by German soldiers and her mother and sisters are in hiding because of her partisan activities.

This pool highlights the pivotal choices and revelations that transformed Irena from a patriotic teenager into a rescuer of Jewish lives. Each event marks a decisive shift in her understanding of the war's horror or her own capabilities, from her first secret act of leaving food under a ghetto fence to the shattering moment she learns her father has been killed. The pool captures key confrontations with the machinery of genocide, including Irena outmaneuvering Russian interrogators and overhearing Rokita's extermination deadline firsthand. Her brief hope for a normal life, symbolized by her engagement to the partisan leader Janek Ridel, is crushed when he is killed in battle. Together these turning points reveal how each sacrifice and loss deepened Irena's conviction that saving her friends was entirely up to her.