April 14, 2024 • 15 mins
Original Air Date: April 14, 2024
Dan Gordon is the screenwriter of the movie “Irena’s Vow”, an unembellished look at an unsung hero of The Holocaust, who saved 12 Jews in Poland, hiding them in the house of a top Nazi commandant, where the 19 year old worked as his housekeeper.
Dan Gordon is the screenwriter of the movie “Irena’s Vow”, an unembellished look at an unsung hero of The Holocaust, who saved 12 Jews in Poland, hiding them in the house of a top Nazi commandant, where the 19 year old worked as his housekeeper.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Sunstein Sessions on iHeartRadio,conversations about issues that matter. Here's your
host, three time Grasie Award winner, Shelley Sunstein. I want to tell
you about a movie I watched withmy husband just a few days ago,
and it's a story I never heardof. It's a story that's probably well
(00:24):
known in Poland, where it tookplace, but this is about one of
the unsung heroes of the Holocaust.The movie is called Arena's Vow and it
is open now in theaters and it'sjust so remarkably done. I had no
idea this story of a nineteen yearold in Poland, a nineteen year old
(00:48):
who saved the lives of twelve Jewswho were destined to be killed. And
not only did she save their lives, she hid them in the home of
a commander. I mean, it'slike, if you wrote this, you
would have said, ah, thisis ridiculous. This never happened. And
joining me this morning is Dan Gordon, who is a screenwriter. So this
(01:11):
is a well known story in Poland, right it is well known, not
as well known as some of theother stories. There was another woman named
Erna Irena Sendler whose story is morewell known. And in Polo, when
you say that the story of IrenaGoodt, they always say, oh,
(01:33):
yes, I know that story,and they're thinking of the one of Irena
Sendler. But this is a knownstory in Poland, and hopefully with this
movie it will become even more wellknown. Tell me you're the history of
your involvement in this remarkable movie.Absolutely just a word. It's only going
(01:53):
to be in the theaters two days. It's in there right now, April
fifteenth and sixteenth, So I doit. People to see it. And
the book now is out on Amazonas well, so if one goes to
Amazon and searches on their search enginefor irenez Val, they'll find it.
About oh, nineteen ninety five,I think something somewhere around there. I
(02:20):
was driving home one night from abusiness meeting. That time, I lived
in la and they used to havea show on a local radio station on
Sunday nights called Religion on the Line. Dennis Prager used to host it,
and I found myself listening to it. It was totally by chance. I
usually didn't take business meetings on theweekend, and instead of having on clergyman
(02:44):
a ZIE usually did he had onIrene Irena in Poland, who was known
as Irene in the United States,and she was telling her story and I
was so captivated by it that whenI got to my home, I sat
in the driveway for the next twohours so that I could hear the rest
(03:05):
of the show in its entirety andhear her story. And the next day
I called the radio station and Isaid, Hi, my name is Dan
Gordon, I'm a screenwriter. I'mactually not a psychopath or a stalker.
I'd actually have credits. You canlook me up, and I'd like you
to pass along my telephone number tomissus Updike. I'm interested in acquiring her
(03:28):
life story rights to do a motionpicture about her story. And about three
or four hours later, my phonerang and I heard this delightfully Polish accented
voice saying, Hello, Hanya,this is Eiden. And that began the
great love affair with Irene and myself. She became like a second mother to
me, and that's how I gotto meet her. And she at that
(03:53):
time was speaking at schools, innercity schools, primarily to tell them the
story of what had happened. Shewas at home one evening and by this
time she was up in years,I suppose in her sixties, maybe more
even. And she got a phonecall, a random call from a college
(04:15):
student who was taking a survey,saying, I want to know if you
believe this lie that there was actuallythe Holocaust, because everyone knows it never
happened. And she had not spokenabout any of her experiences, as was
the case with many Holocaust survivors.She said, when she came to America,
she locked all her memories in herheart and put up but do not
disturb sign. So her daughter knewnothing of her story, and she lit
(04:40):
into this guy and she said,I was there, and she began telling
him exactly what she had witnessed andhow and what she had done, and
her daughter was amazed. Her husbandknew the story, and she said to
her husband, how can people saythat? And her husband said, Irene,
you're preaching to the choir. Tellpeople who don't know. And so
(05:00):
she began speaking and spent the restof her life speaking primarily to students,
and she would always say to them, she would never say I'm the last
generation. She would say, you'rethe last generation they will ever hear from
a living witness you have a responsibility. And you know, we went to
(05:21):
these inner city schools where kids hadno notion of the Holocaust, couldn't figure
out what this little five foot twoinch blonde haired old lady with an accent
like Ja jacobor why were they havingto listen to her? And inside of
five minutes she had them eating outof the palm of her hand. And
(05:43):
she would say to them, shewould say, when I was almost exactly
your age, God put into myhands a choice between life and death,
between immoral and an immoral life.And by the end of it, she
would always say, in the end, even the big macho boys come to
(06:04):
get a hug from ailing. Andshe was amazing, she was wonderful.
Is she still with us? No, she passed, and I believe it
was two thousand and five. Youknow Raina's vow. She made a vow
when she saw one of the manyhorrors of the Holocaust in Poland, where
(06:29):
a woman was clutching her very youngbaby and a Nazi soldier well appeared to
be fawning over the baby at first, and then held the baby and then
threw the baby to the ground andstomped the baby with his foot in front
of the mother, who of coursejust completely just dissolves, and then he
(06:53):
goes on to shoot her. AndRaina's vow is that she will do whatever
it takes this for us not tolose another life, and specifically another baby's
life. And one of the amazingstories about saving these twelve Jews in the
house of a German commander without hisknowledge, without his knowledge right at first,
(07:18):
was that one of the women theyset up this little honeymoon suite a
bed or a mattress in one sectionwhere all of them were living because they
were young couples and young couples havesex, and they would take turns in.
One woman turns up pregnant, andas a group they decide, we
(07:40):
cannot risk all of our lives byhaving this baby. And it's a Raina
who takes a stand and says,no, I made a vow when I
saw this atrocity, and you arehaving this baby and the baby is with
us. Yes, I mean,it's just it was like a miracle upon
(08:01):
miracle, and it just kind ofshows maybe sometimes when you do the right
thing and you follow your heart andyou have marls, it does end well.
Like I said, the way thismovie plays out. I was saying
(08:22):
to my husband, how can thisbe? And yet this all happened,
including when the commander finds out thatshe's hiding Jews. He thinks it's only
three. He doesn't know that it'stwelve. He thinks it's three women.
At first he's going to kill herand has a gun to her head,
and then because he has the hotsfor her, he said, but if
(08:45):
I knew that you loved me,then I can save your life, and
he does, and then she endsup in a prison after the war because
she was seen as a Nazi collaboratory. And yeah, it's an extraordinary story.
And you know, you say,well, maybe this isn't true.
(09:05):
Maybe it was an old number one. Maybe I'm a screenwriter and I embellished
it. I didn't wow. Maybeit was an old woman and she was
telling stories and none of this reallyhappened. Well, I originally put this
together. The first commercial production ofthis was As at Play, and the
play opened on Broadway at the WalterCarer Theater and to thunderous applause. As
(09:30):
the audience was giving it a standingovation, the baby that was conceived in
that cellar walked out onto stage.We flew him in from Europe. His
name is Roman Foller, and hesaid, I am the baby who was
conceived in that cellar. And whatIrene had said, You know, Irene
had such a perfect faith. Itwas not dogmatic, but it was this
(09:54):
perfect, very innocent faith that Godwanted her to do this. And she
had made this vow, she said, because when she saw the baby murdered
in front of her, she said, there was nothing I could have done.
If I'd have spoken up, ifI tried to present, I would
have been killed. And she said, you know, God doesn't ask you
to do the impossible. He askedyou to do what is possible. So
(10:15):
she said, I made a vowthat if it ever came into my hand
to actually save a life, Iwould. So that's why she, without
thinking, said, oh, Ifound the perfect place to hide you.
She had been taken as a housekeeperfor the German major who was the highest
ranking officer in Tarnopole, and shedecided she could hide them in the cellar,
which was stupid, it was insane, It couldn't happen, but they
(10:37):
made it up as they went along, and she had this perfect faith that
God would see them through it whenthere were three married couples there, and
when one of the women, IdaHoller, said that she was pregnant,
the Jews had discussed amongst themselves,we've got to have an abortion. And
Irene had trained to be a nurse, so they wanted her to go out
and get the implements to perform theabortion. And she said, look,
(11:03):
Hitler, the way she saw.You know, Irene's way of putting things
was so perfect. She said,Hitler is not going to get another Jewish
baby. And she said, Godwill not let any harm come to us
because of this baby. And theysaid to her, literally, how do
you know you speak to God?She said yes. And in the end
they decided everything that could possibly gowrong had already gone wrong and they were
(11:26):
still surviving, and they decided,all right, we won't terminate the pregnancy.
And that baby today is seventy fiveyears old something like that. And
what did he do with his life? He married, he had, I
think he has one son, helives. His family tried to get into
(11:46):
the United States and they were neverable to. It was very difficult for
refugees to get in the United Statesif they didn't have a sponsor. After
World War Two, the United Statesquite frankly didn't want any more Jewish immigrants,
so it was very difficult to geta sponsor, and they stayed in
Germany. And so he was bornin Germany and he made his life there.
(12:07):
He still lives there, and heto this day is active in Holocaust
education and reparations and you know,helping the survive what survivors are left,
you know, in their latter years. You know, this movie is coming
out at a time when we havenever witnessed the anti semitism in our lifetime.
(12:31):
We never thought that this would everarise again. How what what are
your hopes for this movie in termsof that? You know, I never
thought when I wrote either the Playeror the movie, that I would ever
live to see a time when Jewswould be hiding once again from genocidal mass
(12:54):
murderers burning their way through their townsand villages, intent on killing every Jew
they could find, simply for thecrime of being Jewish. But that's exactly
what happened on October seventh. Andthen it unveiled this jew hatred that had
always been there. But that wasshocking the extent to which it is so
that in some circles. Now it'sonly acceptable to hate Jews. It's virtuous.
(13:18):
It's literally seen as virtuous. You'reon the right side. And so
my hopes with this in as Irene'smessage always was that you have to stand
up to that kind of Jew hatred. It isn't. If Irene were alive
today, I believe she would besaying, now, isn't the time to
be quiet? Now is the timeto speak up? Now is it the
(13:41):
time to hide? Now is thetime to stand up? Now is not
the time to be afraid? Nowis the time to be bold? And
Jew hatred, I think is theoldest ethnic discrimination in the world, and
it's it's the only word I canthink of. It is is, it's
demand because it makes no sense.In China, there's tremendous anti semitism right
(14:05):
now, there are no Jews inChina. In Japan, mine kanf is
a bestseller, there's tremendous anti semitismin Japan. I doubt that ninety nine
point nine nine nine percent of theJapanese have ever met a Jew in their
life. It's a thing that defieslogic, and to me, it's proof
(14:26):
that the devil exists. So yeah, I think it's a timely message.
I think it's much more important nowthan than it ever was. I think
Irene would have been absolutely horrified bywhat she would see today, and think
she would have been the first tospeak up. And Arenas Vow is only
in theaters April fifteenth and April sixteenth. I urge you to see this important
(14:52):
movie and it was so well done. Thank you so much for joining me
this morning, Dan Gordon and listeningto Sunstein sessions on iHeartRadio, a production
of New York's classic rock Q oneO four point three
Welcome to Sunstein Sessions on iHeartRadio,conversations about issues that matter. Here's your
host, three time Grasie Award winner, Shelley Sunstein. I want to tell
you about a movie I watched withmy husband just a few days ago,
and it's a story I never heardof. It's a story that's probably well
(00:24):
known in Poland, where it tookplace, but this is about one of
the unsung heroes of the Holocaust.The movie is called Arena's Vow and it
is open now in theaters and it'sjust so remarkably done. I had no
idea this story of a nineteen yearold in Poland, a nineteen year old
(00:48):
who saved the lives of twelve Jewswho were destined to be killed. And
not only did she save their lives, she hid them in the home of
a commander. I mean, it'slike, if you wrote this, you
would have said, ah, thisis ridiculous. This never happened. And
joining me this morning is Dan Gordon, who is a screenwriter. So this
(01:11):
is a well known story in Poland, right it is well known, not
as well known as some of theother stories. There was another woman named
Erna Irena Sendler whose story is morewell known. And in Polo, when
you say that the story of IrenaGoodt, they always say, oh,
(01:33):
yes, I know that story,and they're thinking of the one of Irena
Sendler. But this is a knownstory in Poland, and hopefully with this
movie it will become even more wellknown. Tell me you're the history of
your involvement in this remarkable movie.Absolutely just a word. It's only going
(01:53):
to be in the theaters two days. It's in there right now, April
fifteenth and sixteenth, So I doit. People to see it. And
the book now is out on Amazonas well, so if one goes to
Amazon and searches on their search enginefor irenez Val, they'll find it.
About oh, nineteen ninety five,I think something somewhere around there. I
(02:20):
was driving home one night from abusiness meeting. That time, I lived
in la and they used to havea show on a local radio station on
Sunday nights called Religion on the Line. Dennis Prager used to host it,
and I found myself listening to it. It was totally by chance. I
usually didn't take business meetings on theweekend, and instead of having on clergyman
(02:44):
a ZIE usually did he had onIrene Irena in Poland, who was known
as Irene in the United States,and she was telling her story and I
was so captivated by it that whenI got to my home, I sat
in the driveway for the next twohours so that I could hear the rest
(03:05):
of the show in its entirety andhear her story. And the next day
I called the radio station and Isaid, Hi, my name is Dan
Gordon, I'm a screenwriter. I'mactually not a psychopath or a stalker.
I'd actually have credits. You canlook me up, and I'd like you
to pass along my telephone number tomissus Updike. I'm interested in acquiring her
(03:28):
life story rights to do a motionpicture about her story. And about three
or four hours later, my phonerang and I heard this delightfully Polish accented
voice saying, Hello, Hanya,this is Eiden. And that began the
great love affair with Irene and myself. She became like a second mother to
me, and that's how I gotto meet her. And she at that
(03:53):
time was speaking at schools, innercity schools, primarily to tell them the
story of what had happened. Shewas at home one evening and by this
time she was up in years,I suppose in her sixties, maybe more
even. And she got a phonecall, a random call from a college
(04:15):
student who was taking a survey,saying, I want to know if you
believe this lie that there was actuallythe Holocaust, because everyone knows it never
happened. And she had not spokenabout any of her experiences, as was
the case with many Holocaust survivors.She said, when she came to America,
she locked all her memories in herheart and put up but do not
disturb sign. So her daughter knewnothing of her story, and she lit
(04:40):
into this guy and she said,I was there, and she began telling
him exactly what she had witnessed andhow and what she had done, and
her daughter was amazed. Her husbandknew the story, and she said to
her husband, how can people saythat? And her husband said, Irene,
you're preaching to the choir. Tellpeople who don't know. And so
(05:00):
she began speaking and spent the restof her life speaking primarily to students,
and she would always say to them, she would never say I'm the last
generation. She would say, you'rethe last generation they will ever hear from
a living witness you have a responsibility. And you know, we went to
(05:21):
these inner city schools where kids hadno notion of the Holocaust, couldn't figure
out what this little five foot twoinch blonde haired old lady with an accent
like Ja jacobor why were they havingto listen to her? And inside of
five minutes she had them eating outof the palm of her hand. And
(05:43):
she would say to them, shewould say, when I was almost exactly
your age, God put into myhands a choice between life and death,
between immoral and an immoral life.And by the end of it, she
would always say, in the end, even the big macho boys come to
(06:04):
get a hug from ailing. Andshe was amazing, she was wonderful.
Is she still with us? No, she passed, and I believe it
was two thousand and five. Youknow Raina's vow. She made a vow
when she saw one of the manyhorrors of the Holocaust in Poland, where
(06:29):
a woman was clutching her very youngbaby and a Nazi soldier well appeared to
be fawning over the baby at first, and then held the baby and then
threw the baby to the ground andstomped the baby with his foot in front
of the mother, who of coursejust completely just dissolves, and then he
(06:53):
goes on to shoot her. AndRaina's vow is that she will do whatever
it takes this for us not tolose another life, and specifically another baby's
life. And one of the amazingstories about saving these twelve Jews in the
house of a German commander without hisknowledge, without his knowledge right at first,
(07:18):
was that one of the women theyset up this little honeymoon suite a
bed or a mattress in one sectionwhere all of them were living because they
were young couples and young couples havesex, and they would take turns in.
One woman turns up pregnant, andas a group they decide, we
(07:40):
cannot risk all of our lives byhaving this baby. And it's a Raina
who takes a stand and says,no, I made a vow when I
saw this atrocity, and you arehaving this baby and the baby is with
us. Yes, I mean,it's just it was like a miracle upon
(08:01):
miracle, and it just kind ofshows maybe sometimes when you do the right
thing and you follow your heart andyou have marls, it does end well.
Like I said, the way thismovie plays out. I was saying
(08:22):
to my husband, how can thisbe? And yet this all happened,
including when the commander finds out thatshe's hiding Jews. He thinks it's only
three. He doesn't know that it'stwelve. He thinks it's three women.
At first he's going to kill herand has a gun to her head,
and then because he has the hotsfor her, he said, but if
(08:45):
I knew that you loved me,then I can save your life, and
he does, and then she endsup in a prison after the war because
she was seen as a Nazi collaboratory. And yeah, it's an extraordinary story.
And you know, you say,well, maybe this isn't true.
(09:05):
Maybe it was an old number one. Maybe I'm a screenwriter and I embellished
it. I didn't wow. Maybeit was an old woman and she was
telling stories and none of this reallyhappened. Well, I originally put this
together. The first commercial production ofthis was As at Play, and the
play opened on Broadway at the WalterCarer Theater and to thunderous applause. As
(09:30):
the audience was giving it a standingovation, the baby that was conceived in
that cellar walked out onto stage.We flew him in from Europe. His
name is Roman Foller, and hesaid, I am the baby who was
conceived in that cellar. And whatIrene had said, You know, Irene
had such a perfect faith. Itwas not dogmatic, but it was this
(09:54):
perfect, very innocent faith that Godwanted her to do this. And she
had made this vow, she said, because when she saw the baby murdered
in front of her, she said, there was nothing I could have done.
If I'd have spoken up, ifI tried to present, I would
have been killed. And she said, you know, God doesn't ask you
to do the impossible. He askedyou to do what is possible. So
(10:15):
she said, I made a vowthat if it ever came into my hand
to actually save a life, Iwould. So that's why she, without
thinking, said, oh, Ifound the perfect place to hide you.
She had been taken as a housekeeperfor the German major who was the highest
ranking officer in Tarnopole, and shedecided she could hide them in the cellar,
which was stupid, it was insane, It couldn't happen, but they
(10:37):
made it up as they went along, and she had this perfect faith that
God would see them through it whenthere were three married couples there, and
when one of the women, IdaHoller, said that she was pregnant,
the Jews had discussed amongst themselves,we've got to have an abortion. And
Irene had trained to be a nurse, so they wanted her to go out
and get the implements to perform theabortion. And she said, look,
(11:03):
Hitler, the way she saw.You know, Irene's way of putting things
was so perfect. She said,Hitler is not going to get another Jewish
baby. And she said, Godwill not let any harm come to us
because of this baby. And theysaid to her, literally, how do
you know you speak to God?She said yes. And in the end
they decided everything that could possibly gowrong had already gone wrong and they were
(11:26):
still surviving, and they decided,all right, we won't terminate the pregnancy.
And that baby today is seventy fiveyears old something like that. And
what did he do with his life? He married, he had, I
think he has one son, helives. His family tried to get into
(11:46):
the United States and they were neverable to. It was very difficult for
refugees to get in the United Statesif they didn't have a sponsor. After
World War Two, the United Statesquite frankly didn't want any more Jewish immigrants,
so it was very difficult to geta sponsor, and they stayed in
Germany. And so he was bornin Germany and he made his life there.
(12:07):
He still lives there, and heto this day is active in Holocaust
education and reparations and you know,helping the survive what survivors are left,
you know, in their latter years. You know, this movie is coming
out at a time when we havenever witnessed the anti semitism in our lifetime.
(12:31):
We never thought that this would everarise again. How what what are
your hopes for this movie in termsof that? You know, I never
thought when I wrote either the Playeror the movie, that I would ever
live to see a time when Jewswould be hiding once again from genocidal mass
(12:54):
murderers burning their way through their townsand villages, intent on killing every Jew
they could find, simply for thecrime of being Jewish. But that's exactly
what happened on October seventh. Andthen it unveiled this jew hatred that had
always been there. But that wasshocking the extent to which it is so
that in some circles. Now it'sonly acceptable to hate Jews. It's virtuous.
(13:18):
It's literally seen as virtuous. You'reon the right side. And so
my hopes with this in as Irene'smessage always was that you have to stand
up to that kind of Jew hatred. It isn't. If Irene were alive
today, I believe she would besaying, now, isn't the time to
be quiet? Now is the timeto speak up? Now is it the
(13:41):
time to hide? Now is thetime to stand up? Now is not
the time to be afraid? Nowis the time to be bold? And
Jew hatred, I think is theoldest ethnic discrimination in the world, and
it's it's the only word I canthink of. It is is, it's
demand because it makes no sense.In China, there's tremendous anti semitism right
(14:05):
now, there are no Jews inChina. In Japan, mine kanf is
a bestseller, there's tremendous anti semitismin Japan. I doubt that ninety nine
point nine nine nine percent of theJapanese have ever met a Jew in their
life. It's a thing that defieslogic, and to me, it's proof
(14:26):
that the devil exists. So yeah, I think it's a timely message.
I think it's much more important nowthan than it ever was. I think
Irene would have been absolutely horrified bywhat she would see today, and think
she would have been the first tospeak up. And Arenas Vow is only
in theaters April fifteenth and April sixteenth. I urge you to see this important
(14:52):
movie and it was so well done. Thank you so much for joining me
this morning, Dan Gordon and listeningto Sunstein sessions on iHeartRadio, a production
of New York's classic rock Q oneO four point three
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