Another factoid about Pani Sendler.
Her life in Communist Poland was not a happy one. In 1949, she was brutally interrogated by the then Communist security service (UB) for allegedly hiding members of Polish underground organization (AK, Home Army). She lost her baby after that. Before, she managed to hand over her “jar archive” with 2,500 names of the Jewish children her team had saved through Adolf Bermann, the chairman of the Central Committee of Jews in Poland. Under German occupation, “Zegota” included Jewish organizations, represented by Adolf Bermann and Leon Feiner. The Council for Aid to Jews “Zegota” was the only underground organization that was run jointly by Jews and Polish gentiles, representing a variety of political movements. They helped at least 4,000 Polish Jews, mainly in Warsaw, and both the Polish and the Jewish underground was able to reach with aid to some 8,500 of the 28,000 Jews hiding in Warsaw, and to about 1,000 trying to survive elsewhere in Poland.
After the war, Irena Sendler continued her work as social welfare official and director of vocational schools, but she and her family couldn’t avoid harassment from the then Communist authorities. She never spoke in public about her wartime heroic deeds, having chosen a private life, dedicated to her family and friends. The memories of the past haunted her. As Mrs. Sendler recalled later, she and her co-workers visiting the Warsaw ghetto saw starving children, abandoned corpses and Nazi SS officers using skulls for target practice – “I saw all this and a million other things that a human eye should never have to see” she later said, “and it has stayed with me for every second of every day that God granted me to live.”
The Polish Communist authorities were not interested to reward her for the help rendered to Jewish children during the war. But the Jews did not forget. In 1965, Irena Sendler became one of the first “Righteous Gentiles” honored by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem for wartime heroics. Polish authorities did not allow her to go to Israel to be praised there. Only in 1983, she could collect the award (a medal “Righteous among the Nations”), confirmed by the Knesset. In 1991, she became an honorary citizen of Israel.
Earlier, in 1968, when the Communist authorities cracked down on Polish Jews, calling them “Zionists” and expelling some 20,000 from Poland, Mrs. Sendler announced she was ready to hide Jews again. For her statement, the authorities expelled her children from the Warsaw University.
Thanks for the additional information. I can’t imagine why the Nobel Committee would choose Algore over Ms Sendler. And did you note in the info I posted that dismissive phrase **Regardless of its legitimacy** when discussing her nomination for the Nobel? That was straight from Wikipedia.
Fie on them!
I do not want to diminish this story, but I wish there would be as much coverage about the Soviet atrocities. It seems that for every ten Nazi horror stories, we might get one Soviet horror story. IMO.