"Courage is one step ahead of fear."

This quote by Coleman Young is not only very controversial, but is supported greatly by the memoir In My Hands by Irene Gut Opdyke. In the memoir, Irene is constantly fearful of being separated from her family, and she even holds with her the fear of losing her life. Irene lives in a very difficult time of war and all of the circumstances are unclear to her. The Germans are after the Jews and Irene sees many of them slaughtered one day at her Job working in a kitchen at a factory for the Germans. From that point on, she realizes that she is better off than many other people. She is well fed, has a place to sleep at night, and is not forced to slave away for fear of being shot.
Although Irene has been through quite a bit up to this point, she makes it a point to begin making a difference. Even the slightest difference is a difference. She begins courageously hiding food under a fence at a ghetto camp for the Jews. Although she is risking her life, because as Schulz, Irene's boss said, "Bad things happen to Jew-lovers. Do you understand me? Very bad"(103).
So why does Irene risk her life when she is so fearful that what she is doing could lead to her death? The answer is the quote, "courage is one step ahead of fear". Being a helpless young girl, and fearing that each of her kind acts toward those Jews suffering in the camps would lead to her death, was nothing compared to her courage. Irene's courage took over all of her fears, including her lingering thought that she was only a girl, and there was not much she could do to help.
And courage is not only with Irene in this memoir. No, courage conquers fear in almost all of the characters. In Schultz who is kind to Irene, and even takes her out to buy a pair of boots so that she can walk to work. He lets Irene's sister Janina help out in the kitchen when she loses her job. Courage is with all of the Jews as they conquer their fear of dying, and hold on to their lives. It is with them when they work, when they see others die right before their eyes for not working, when they wake up in the morning, and when they rest at night.
Courage is very important to all of the characters in In My Hands, even including the Germans. Is courage always one step ahead of fear though? Probably not. This is where the quote is controversial. The memoir does show, though, that when courage is one step ahead of fear, great things can be accomplished.