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The Courage To Care Award By Irene Gut Odyke

789 Words4 Pages

The Courage to Care award is an honorary award by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) given to people who have rescued Jews during the Holocaust. Established in 1987, it was renamed in 2011 in honor of Jan Karski, a Polish diplomat who was well deserved of the award. My thoughts about this award are, just the thought of being able to save thousands of Jews and have a story to tell and then years later sharing your heroic story to the world and receiving an award is one amazing thing that can happen. For example, I am struck by the story of a young girl by the name of Irene Gut Opdyke who, as a teenager, saved 16 Polish Jews. I mean it’s hard being a teenager now but imagine it back then, and she saved lives! That pretty impressive to me. It’s not only that but as a young girl during the this time she had gone through some stuff. Managing to go through horrifying moments, she then in another occasion saved 6 more Jews from misery. …show more content…

Irene Gut Opdyke, as a teenager, was raped by a Soviet soldier officer at the time of the Holocaust. An article states, “She was separated from her family, escaped twice from incarceration, and captured and raped by Soviet soldiers.” I don’t think anyone not even me can imagine how hard it must have been for her to go through this and at a young age. Back then if you were raped then that was it no one could be able to do anything and if you told off a Soviet officer you would probably die. Unlike today where you can send the person to jail. Based on movies or serious short films that I've seen, the victim of the whole thing usually keeps to herself of what happened to her maybe because she is scared to speaking out of embarrassed. So her being the heroic person she is and gong through this with no support of any kind is well deserved of an

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