Pole who saved 2500 children from the Nazis dies

Tuesday, 13 May 2008 -
Irena Sendlerowa, a Polish woman who smuggled thousands of children out of the Warsaw Ghetto saving them from certain death at the hands of the Nazis, has died at the age of 98.

As a social worker, she had neither the financial might nor the contact book of Oskar Schindler, to whom she is almost inevitably compared, yet she rescued almost double the number of children, about 2,500 in total.

The tricks of her trade were not elaborate: tool boxes, trolleys, suitcases and old sewer pipes were used to smuggleJewish babies and toddlers out of the ghetto, undetected by the Nazis.

"Her courageous activities ... serve as a beacon of light to the world, inspiring hope and restoring faith in the innate goodness of mankind," said Avner Shalev, the chairman of Israel's Holocaust memorial centre, Yad Vashem.

Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize
Officially recognised as a national hero by the Polish parliament last year as well as being nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize

"People who stand up for others, for the weak, are very rare," Marek Edelman, the last surviving commander of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, told Polish television. "The world would have been a better place if there were more of them."

By Claire Soares

Irena Sendlerowa - 1910 - 2008
http://wiadomosci.onet.pl/1746957,11,item.html

Irena Sendler - Holocaust Heroine

Irena Sendler was a member of Zegota, the clandestine Polish Rescue Organization, who, at great risk, rescued 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto and placed them with Christian families.

She buried jars containing their real and assumed names in the garden, so that they could be one day learn the names of their biological families after the war.

Several Uniontown, Kansas [USA] students researched the story of Irena Sendler and decided that they would like to find Sendler's grave. To their surprise the students discovered that Sendler was still alive and that was living in a nursing home in Warsaw, confined to a wheelchair. The brutal torture by the Gestapo had taken its toll, but never once did she reveal the names.

And so they started corresponding, with a Polish ornithologist at the university in Kansas City as their translator. The students decided to write a play about Sendlerowa.

The play "Life in a Jar" debuted last February during their history class, followed by performances in rural churches, schools and nursing homes in Kansas and Missouri. Many in the audience were touched by the story, including a Jewish history teacher. He invited the student actors out to a restaurant, and asked them if they had a wish.

Yes -- they wanted to meet Sendlerowa in person. Several days later, he sent a check to the Uniontown school for six and a half thousand dollars he had collected from his Jewish friends, with only two conditions: that they give Sendlerowa a big hug from him, and after they return, to tell him everything that happened in Warsaw.

At a synagogue in the suburbs of Kansas City, on April 25 of this year, the Jewish teacher addressed a gathering of 250 people.

"How many people did Oscar Schindler save? A thousand. Irena Sendlerowa rescued two and a half thousand. Did you see a film about her?" he asked the audience, introducing the play. "Life in a jar" is only ten minutes long, as required for the student history olympics.

There are four roles. Sendlerowa tries to convince a reluctant Jewish mother in the ghetto to trust her with her child. Afterwards, she writes the child's name on a card and places it in a jar, burying it in the garden. The play won the history olympics in Kansas, but did not qualify for the national finals in Washington, DC. However, the four students presented their play in New York, it was filmed for a local channel, and C-Span and NPR showed interest. Their own lives and perspectives were changed by the play.

And this coming Wednesday, the four students will be meeting their hero in Warsaw!
- Maryann Wojciechowski - Las Vegas, NV

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Zegota - The clandestine Polish Rescue Organization

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We said, "Here We Are...Help Us"...And They Did. Jewish survivors meet one of their teenage rescuers.

Jan Karski - New York Times eulogy of the man who tried to stop the Holocaust.

A List of over 700 Names of Polish men, women and children killed while helping Jews

Rescuers Honored by Yad Vashem Jerusalem - A List of Countries

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Kansas Students Meet Holocaust Hero
By Monika Scislowska Associated Press writer
Saturday, May 26, 2001; 9:12 a.m. EDT
WARSAW, Poland –– Seated on a carpeted floor in a tiny Warsaw apartment, four wide-eyed American students were getting the lesson of their lives from a teacher with unique credentials.

The teen-agers from Uniontown, Kan., finally were face-to-face with their hero of the Holocaust: 91-year-old Irena Sendler, credited with saving 2,500 Jewish children from death in World War II. While Sendler has been widely recognized by Jewish groups for risking her life to save Jews from the Holocaust, including a medal from the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Israel, her story was a revelation to the students.

"Under Nazi occupation I saw the Polish nation drowning," the short white-haired Sender, clad in black, told the teen-agers. "And those in most difficult position were the Jews. And among them those most vulnerable were the children. So I had to help."

The meeting Thursday night highlighted an extraordinary week for Megan Stewart, 16, Elizabeth Cambers, 16, Sabrina Coons, 17, and Janice Underwood, 15.

"I love you. You are my hero, you are my inspiration," said Cambers, holding out her hand.

"I am not a hero," Sendler said. "A hero is someone doing extraordinary things. What I did was not extraordinary. It was a normal thing to do."

Sendler was head of the children's section in the Polish underground movement Zegota, which worked to rescue Jews. Posing as a nurse, she visited the Warsaw Ghetto and convinced Jewish parents that their children had a better chance of survival if she smuggled them out and placed them with Polish families. She wrote children's names on slips of paper and buried them in jars in a neighbor's yard as a record that could help them find their parents after the war. The Nazis arrested her in 1943, but she refused – despite severe beatings – to reveal the names.

Cambers and her fellow students wrote a skit, "The Holocaust and Life in a Jar," which won a History Day contest. Amazed to learn their hero was still alive, they wrote to her, developed a friendship. A teacher collected donations to fund their trip to Poland.

"After all she has done, she is so modest. She always talks about other people, gives them credit, never herself," Coons said.

"She is a mentor guiding us through life and history," Stewart said.

On Friday, the students closed the circle of history by meeting one of those saved from the Warsaw ghetto. Elzbieta Ficowska was a 5-month-old baby when a woman working for Sendler rescued her in July, 1942. The rest of her family died in the ghetto. "It was at the last moment, just before the ghetto uprising," Ficowska said with tears in her eyes. "If it were not for Irena (Sendler) I would not be here with you." Ficowska showed the students a silver spoon that her parents had engraved with her name and date of birth, that was carried out with her.