Posted on 01/30/2019 8:14:12 AM PST by Thistooshallpass9
“I was brought up to believe that a person must be rescued when drowning, regardless of religion and nationality,” Irena Sendler recalled in 2005. Sixty-five year earlier, when World War II broke out, she was a 28-year-old social worker in Warsaw, Poland.
She was not Jewish, but when she saw the Nazis begin herding Jewish populations into squalid ghettos, she felt she had to help them. She decided to risk everything by resisting the occupying forces, and trying to rescue the drowning.
Is there a text version?
She was up for a Nobel Peace prize but lost out to Al Gore. How screwed up is that?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irena_Sendler
https://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/righteous-women/sendler.asp
When World War II broke out, Irena Sendler was a 29-year-old social worker, employed by the Welfare Department of the Warsaw municipality. After the German occupation, the department continued to take care of the great number of poor and dispossessed people in the city. Irena Sendler took advantage of her job in order to help the Jews, however this became practically impossible once the ghetto was sealed off in November 1940. Close to 400,000 people had been driven into the small area that had been allocated to the ghetto, and their situation soon deteriorated. The poor hygienic conditions in the crowded ghetto, the lack of food and medical supplies resulted in epidemics and high death rates. Irena Sendler, at great personal danger, devised means to get into the ghetto and help the dying Jews. She managed to obtain a permit from the municipality that enabled her to enter the ghetto to inspect the sanitary conditions. Once inside the ghetto, she established contact with activists of the Jewish welfare organization and began to help them. She helped smuggle Jews out of the ghetto to the Aryan side and helped set up hiding places for them.
When the Council for Aid to Jews (Zegota) was established, Sendler became one of its main activists. The Council was created in fall 1942, after 280,000 Jews were deported from Warsaw to Treblinka. When it began to function towards the end of the year, most of the Jews of Warsaw had been killed. But it played a crucial role in the rescue of a large number who had survived the massive deportations. The organization took care of thousands of Jews who were trying to survive in hiding, seeking hiding places, and paying for the upkeep and medical care.
In September 1943, four months after the Warsaw ghetto was completely destroyed, Sendler was appointed director of Zegota’s Department for the Care of Jewish Children. Sendler, whose underground name was Jolanta, exploited her contacts with orphanages and institutes for abandoned children, to send Jewish children there. Many of the children were sent to the Rodzina Marii (Family of Mary) Orphanage in Warsaw, and to religious institutions run by nuns in nearby Chotomów, and in Turkowice, near Lublin. The exact number of children saved by Sendler and her partners is unknown.
On 20 October 1943, Sendler was arrested. She managed to stash away incriminating evidence such as the coded addresses of children in the care of Zegota and large sums of money to pay to those who helped Jews. She was sentenced to death and sent to the infamous Pawiak prison, but underground activists managed to bribe officials to release her. Her close encounter with death did not deter her from continuing her activity. After her release in February 1944, even though she knew that the authorities were keeping an eye on her, Sendler continued her underground activities. Because of the danger she had to go into hiding. The necessities of her clandestine life prevented her from attending her mother’s funeral.
There is a place in Fort Scott, KS., the Lowell Milkan Center for Unsung Heroes. She is hero number one.
I just watched the movie about her last month {”The Courageous
Heart of Irena Sendler”}. It was a Hallmark movie (which I normally do not like), but not saccharine, IMO. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1010278/
Gore did. Obama won it in 2009.
One of the Nobel committe’s most shameful decisions ever made, and that is saying a lot.
Fortunately, there have been some great articles about her here at Free Republic.
Subject: Remember this Lady! Irena Sendler
FReeper Canteen ~ Hall of Heroes: Irena Sendler ~ 23 November 2015
Modesty is the M.O. for Polish heroine Irena Sendler ( lost Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore )
15 more Irena Sendler Free Republic archive results here
I also highly recommend The Hiding Place!!!!!!!
PS
Corrie TenBoom, a Dutch Christian, is recognized at Yad Vashem as ‘one of the righteous’
She and her sister ( middle age women) were sent to Ravensbruuck for Hiding Jewish people and working with the resistance
Her father, sister and nephew died.....she survived
Thanks for posting......
She would have lost against Obongo and Yasser Arafat. That’s how things are these days.
That is true!
On October 19, 1965, Yad Vashem recognized Irena Sendler as Righteous Among the Nations. The tree planted in her honor stands at the entrance to the Avenue of the Righteous Among the Nations.
Of the honored living Rescuers, she survived until 2008 (age 98) and while she joined the Polish Communist Party after the war, her occupation remained focused on social and medical work in the Warsaw area. In 1980 she joined the Solidarity movement and while made an honorary citizen of Israel in 1991, she remained in Poland until her death.
Thanks for the kind comments. The students love to see Irena's story go on and on....touching the world.
It is interesting that Irena's personal translator was also Al Gore's translator on his several trips to Poland. She liked Mr. Gore. Irena loved the world, those who did good. She had no time for those who were not trying to ‘repair the world.’ Our calendar of events is on the web site under Life in a Jar schedule. Keep up the good work.
Norm Conard - teacher/director of Life in a Jar/the Irena Sendler Project
The play he directs is still being performed around the US. The next performance is May 2 in South Carolina.
USS Yorktown, 40 Patriots Point Rd Mt Pleasant, SC United States
https://irenasendler.org/events/
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