CREDIT: Katarina Stoltz, Reuters
Irena Sendler, 97, saved 2,500 Jewish
children during the Second World War,
smuggling them out of the Warsaw ghetto.
Posted on 03/15/2007 12:29:14 PM PDT by GMMAC
Poland honours woman who saved Jewish children
Declared national heroine
Harry De Quetteville, National Post
Published: Thursday, March 15, 2007
POZNAN, Poland - For most Jewish children imprisoned behind the walls of the Warsaw ghetto, the only exit led to concentration camps and the gas chambers.
However, thousands did find salvation in the form of Irena Sendler, who smuggled them out in workmen's bags or through the sewers, before taking them to safety and hiding them with friendly families around the city.
Yesterday Ms. Sendler, now 97, was honoured as a national heroine by the Polish parliament for saving 2,500 Jewish children during the Second World War.
CREDIT: Katarina Stoltz, Reuters
Irena Sendler, 97, saved 2,500 Jewish
children during the Second World War,
smuggling them out of the Warsaw ghetto.
The ceremony, which Ms. Sendler was too frail to attend, marked another step in Poland's recent attempts to efface a long-standing reputation for anti-Semitism largely fostered by the post-war communist regime.
In the Polish senate, politicians gathered to hear one woman who was saved by Ms. Sendler read out a letter on her behalf.
"Every child saved with my help is the justification of my existence on this Earth, and not a title to glory," Ms. Sendler said in the letter, read out by Elzbieta Ficowska, who was just six months old when she was saved from the ghetto by Ms. Sendler's resistance group.
"Over a half-century has passed since the hell of the Holocaust, but its spectre still hangs over the world and doesn't allow us to forget."
Poland's President Lech Kacyzinski described Ms. Sendler, who has been nominated for this year's Nobel Peace Prize, as a "great hero who deserves respect from our entire nation."
But it was in the years after the Nazi occupation of Poland that Ms. Sendler began the dangerous work for which she was finally honoured yesterday -- establishing a network of friends and acquaintances to help some of the half million Jews forced into the ghetto.
Some 400,000 of those died, either through disease in the ghetto or at the death camps where a total of three million Polish Jews perished.
Until 1943, Ms. Sendler used her status as a Warsaw municipal welfare officer to roam the ghetto, ostensibly to combat contagious diseases.
But according to Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust memorial centre which has already honoured Ms. Sendler as a "righteous gentile" for her actions, she used her visits to hand out money, clothes and medicines.
She disguised herself by donning a Star of David armband used by the Nazis to mark out Jews, and organized escape plans for thousands of children.
Some were carried out in bags, while others were saved by crawling through the network of sewers common to the ghetto and the rest of Warsaw.
Once free, the children were sent by Ms. Sendler to Warsaw families, orphanages or convents where they were hidden. For each success, Ms. Sendler buried a jar containing the child's name, to help families reunite after the war.
Sadly, for most Jewish families that was not to be after SS chief Heinrich Himmler visited the Polish town of Poznan in 1943, and told fellow SS officers they were to achieve "the extermination of the Jewish people."The Warsaw ghetto originally contained more than 450,000 people, but by January, 1943, deportations to death camps, summary executions, starvation and disease had reduced it to just several tens of thousands.
On Oct. 20, 1943, six months after the failed Warsaw ghetto uprising, Ms. Sendler was arrested by the Nazi secret police, the Gestapo.
She was tortured, her arms and legs broken, but she refused to give up the names of those she had saved, and she was scheduled for execution.
However, members of the resistance managed to bribe a Gestapo officer and she escaped, officially listed as dead, and hid for the rest of the war.
"She's a great lady, very courageous, and I think she's a model for the whole international community," Israel's ambassador to Poland, David Peleg, said at the ceremony.
"Her courage is a very special one," Mr. Peleg added.
Ms. Sendler has said she does not consider herself a heroine.
"I still have a bad conscience for having done so little," she has said.
The Daily Telegraph, with files from Agence France-Presse
© National Post 2007
PING!
On Oct. 20, 1943, six months after the failed Warsaw ghetto uprising, Ms. Sendler was arrested by the Nazi secret police, the Gestapo.
She was tortured, her arms and legs broken, but she refused to give up the names of those she had saved, and she was scheduled for execution.
However, members of the resistance managed to bribe a Gestapo officer and she escaped, officially listed as dead, and hid for the rest of the war.
....
Ms. Sendler has said she does not consider herself a heroine.
"I still have a bad conscience for having done so little," she has said.
God bless her and those with courage like her.
She is so cute !!!!!
Come give Irena Sendler a bump and prayer!
I so glad she has been acknowledged before she passed on.
I can't wait until those files are open and the rest of the terroristic criminals/animals/exrement are swept up. For the the history of the ones that died already set straight.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1799017/posts
Long-Secret Archive of Nazi War Records to be Opened
I had the honor of helping to write a book on Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish "Angel of Rescue." During the process, I had access to historical and Vatican files that detailed that activities of many "common" citizens, who without reward or recognition, dared to confront the Nazi war machine in order to save lives.
The "greatest generation" is no sobriquet, nor is the designation reserved for Americans. Across Europe and Asia, people embodied their values and beliefs through outstanding acts of resistance that saved lives and challenged the power structure.
I weep at the realization that that kind of moral fiber seems extinct in the face of the Islamofascists.
Stolat, Ms. Sendler (you're almost there!). Please pray for us. If "you have a bad conscience for doing so little," I'm in despair for doing so little.
Thank you again for this humbling post.
High volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel, WOT
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High volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel, WOT
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Urging all to pray for both.
One of my husband's Major professors in his PhD program was saved like this. When he was 5, just as the Germans were beginning to restrict the movements of the Jews in Poland, his mother brought him to a convent and asked the nuns to watch over him until she could come back to get him. Then she, and her husband were able to escape. I guess it would have been harder, with a child, so that's why they left him.
After the war, they returned to get him and they emigrated to Israel. He was a visiting professor when he was at Florida State, and sadly, because there was some problem with his work visa, he couldn't just come and go. If he'd left the country, he may not have been allowed back in, so he was not even able to go home when his Mother died.
Warning! This is a high-volume ping list.
"The group's members, mostly Roman Catholics, risked their own lives to save Jews from the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Poland." This AP story was printed in our local paper today. Some of the accounts do not mention Ms. Irena Sendler was Catholic. I mention this in light of past arguments on Free Republic; finger-pointing, between Catholics and Protestants, as we face square on the failure of Christianity in Germany culture to prevent the Holocaust, instead of understanding that failure and, TODAY, modeling the same courage and valor of a individual like this in standing for the Jewish people and the Nation of Israel in the same, modern day, cultural environment which preceded the Holocaust. Then, it was Nationalist Socialism. Today, it is the Marxist/Islamist alliance.
They want Israel and the Jews.
They can't have them.
If you'd like to be on or off this
Christian Supporters of Israel ping list,
please FR mail me ~
There failed not ought of any good thing which the LORD had
spoken unto the house of Israel; all came to pass. (Joshua 21:45)
Letter To The President In Support Of Israel ~
'Final Solution,' Phase 2 ~
Warnings ~
The Nature Of Bruce ~
"The West has given more significance to the myth of the genocide of the Jews, even more significant than God, religion, and the prophets...."—Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
The Holocaust Chronicle ~
" ... It's time we recognized the nature of the conflict. It's total war and we are all involved. Nobody on our side is exempted because of age, gender, or handicap. The Islamofacists have stolen childhood from the world."—FReeper Retief
"Palestine is the wrong name for their State. It should be called Anarchy."—FReeper sgtbono2002
"Then let's wait and see what the Arabs do after they take Gaza. There's nothing like Arab reality to break up a Jewish fantasy."—FReeper Noachian
A student told his professor he was going to "Palestine" to "fight for freedom, peace and justice,"—Orwellian leftist code words that mean "murder Jews."
That early photo shows a wonderful light in her face.
"That early photo shows a wonderful light in her face."
That is exactly what I was thinking, except I see it in her face now. How beautiful she is.
I find it very sad that in most Canadian schools they do not even teach history
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