Interview by Benjamin Poole
Hello Dan! Congratulations on Irena's Vow. Could you please introduce the film to our readers and talk a little about the transition to film from your Broadway play?
Irena's Vow tells the story of Irena Gut, a young Polish Catholic girl who miraculously saved 12 Jews during the Holocaust by hiding them in the basement of the highest ranking German officer in Tarnopol without his knowledge. She hid them there for some eight months and when the elderly Major discovered the secret she was forced to become his mistress in order to save them. She saved them all.
I note that Irena's Vow has had a staggered release from its 2023 production, with international distribution achieved this month in 2025. Personally, I think this is serendipitous. For one thing, just like its protagonist, the film is tenacious. But also, it seems to me that nazis, their sick ideas and jumped-up iconography, are making a dreadful comeback: social media is like an ongoing Wannsee Conference. Do you see this too? How does your film fit into this worrying social context?
I absolutely agree that the release of the film in England coincides with the greatest wave of Jew hatred since the 1930s. Even more concerning is the fact that the Jew Hatred of the '30s was largely confined to Nazi Germany with many in Eastern Europe being sympathetic to anti-semitism and the rest of the world apathetic to the plight of the Jews. Today, because of social media and a world wide media mind set, Jew hatred in the West as a whole has become not only acceptable but amongst the far left, virtuous. I never thought when I wrote Irena's Vow that I would live to see a time when Jews would be hiding in basements and attics once again from marauding mass murderers burning their way through their towns and villages bent on killing every Jew in sight. But that is exactly what happened in Southern Israel on October 7th 2023. No less horrifying is the fact that on October 7th and 8th while Hamas was still in the process of holding territory in Southern Israel, slaughtering, raping and kidnapping Jews, there were demonstrations in New York, London, Toronto and Sydney etc not condemning the massacre but standing in solidarity with those perpetrating it and blaming the victims for bringing the attack upon themselves.
Adapting and presenting this story is a huge responsibility. Reading Irena's biography, I notice that her initial treatment by the invading army (Irena was beaten and raped by Russian soldiers when in hiding) was excised from the film. I can understand why this was not portrayed, but what are the difficulties when considering what to include and what not to in representations of such important real-life events?
In the screenplay, stage play and novel I wrote (all called Irena's Vow), I absolutely showed what happened to Irena at the hands of the Russians; being gang raped, beaten and left to die in the forest. The director had a different point of view and deleted those scenes.
I was intrigued by the portrayal of Rugemer. A high ranking nazi who has clearly been privy to awful things, and a rapist, the film affords him an essential humanity which is borne out by the real-life footage shown over the closing credits. As much as my heart wants to see any and every nazi beaten to death by the Bear Jew, my head recognises that attempts to recognise and appraise these monsters as human beings is probably a more constructive and hopeful approach. Please could you elaborate on how you approached the character of Rugemer?
I believe Rugemer was in some ways no less despicable than the character of the mass murderer SS Sturbahnfuhrer Rokita. To me he truly symbolises what Hannah Arendt called the "banality of evil." Irena told the Jews in the basement that the Major was "a good man" who had agreed to keep their secret. She didn't want them to feel guilty over the fact that she was being raped each night by this "good man" in order to keep them alive. After the war Rugemer was thrown out by his family because his wife heard that he had a young Polish mistress. That's when the Hallers, who thought he was a hero, took him into their home and he became like a grandfather to their son Roman, who still thinks of him in that way. And the whole time Rugemer played the hero with them. But I'm sure that he played the role of loving grandfather well. And who knows...perhaps he was.
If you were to programme Irena's Vow with two other films on the bill, what would they be and why?
I honestly wouldn't programme Irena's Vow with two other films. It wouldn't be fair to any of them. Each story of the Holocaust is a world unto itself and deserves to be appreciated individually, no longer to stand in lines.
Thank you so much for your interest in the movie. I would hope people who want a fuller picture would buy the book as well, which gives, I think, as books usually do, both a deeper insight into the characters, places and events more in the context of the Holocaust as a whole. The thing about Irena's Vow is its insularity, its confinement to the basement where life and death always hung in the balance but those who were there were cut off from what was going on outside.
Irena's Vow is in UK cinemas from March 28th. You can read our review here.