It is 1988 and an unseen teacher introduces the kindly Irena to his high school class. Soon there will be no living witnesses of the Holocaust, so Irena now reaches out to young people to tell them her story. As she begins recounting her experience, we springboard back to German-occupied Poland during World War II where Irena, who by this point has already suffered at the hands of the Russians, is working in a munitions plant in a labor camp. When Irena one day faints on the job, Major Rugemer, a highly regarded SS officer, arranges to have her transferred to a mess hall. Rugemer then requisitions Irena to be his housekeeper where she supervises a laundry staffed by Jews, whom she quickly befriends. When Irena hears that all the Jews will be transported to a death camp, she knows this is not a rumor—she has already witnessed the murders of innocent Jews right before her eyes who she was too frightened to try and save. So she vows to God never to stand by and do nothing again, and at great risk hides and secretly protects for the next two years these 12 Jewish refugees in the safest place she can find—the cellar of Major Rugemer's villa. Irena Vows tickets will sometimes take you where you don’t want to go, but sometimes we have to.
