EXCLUSIVE: Good Deed Entertainment has secured the story rights to Irene Gut Opdyke’s heroic Holocaust account, and is planning a film adaptation. Zoë Green and Patrick Given have been tapped to pen the screenplay.
The film will focus on Opdyke’s experience during WWII, where the young Polish Catholic hid 12 Jews in a German officer’s basement without his knowledge. She later made the most personal of sacrifices to protect her friends when their hideout was discovered. After the war, Opdyke found refuge in America and kept her story to herself until 1974. Opdyke then spent most of her later years touring the US, Canada and Europe sharing her story before passing away in 2003.
Opdyke’s story is also chronicled in the autobiography In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer, and the Broadway play Irena’s Vow, written by Dan Gordon.
Nikki Stier of Good Deed is producing along with Meyer Gottlieb, a Polish Holocaust survivor himself. Good Deed’s Lenny Shapiro and Scott Donley will executive produce with Irene’s daughter Jeannie Opdyke Smith, who will also consult on the project. The story rights were purchased from the Opdyke Estate.
