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Irena Sendler |
Nobel Prize Candidate Saved Thousands of Children From Horrors of Holocaust
Few people would deny that former Vice President Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were deserving of their shared 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, but did you know about Irena Sendler, another of last year’s Nobel candidates?
If you didn’t, you’re not alone. It took decades for the world to learn about this remarkable woman. The following excerpt from a letter she wrote to the Polish Senate last year, after the nation had honored her heroism during World War II, gives some insight into this modest woman whose heart went out to so many.
"Every child saved with my help and the help of all the wonderful secret messengers, who today are no longer living, is the justification of my existence on this earth, and not a title to glory," Sendler wrote.
Her letter followed Poland’s recognition of her amazing efforts to save an estimated 2,500 Jewish children in the Warsaw Ghetto, the largest of the Jewish ghettos created by Nazi Germany. The Warsaw Ghetto’s population of 450,000 in 1941 plummeted to about 71,000 by 1943 because of starvation, disease and deportations to concentration and extermination camps. From 1942-43, Sendler, who died at age 98 in May 2008, received permission from the Nazis to work in the ghetto, but she had a greater purpose.
She was in charge of the Zegota children’s section. The secret organization was created to help Jews in Poland after the Nazi’s invaded in 1939. Sendler is reported to have smuggled children, including infants, in the bottom of a large tool box she took while traveling in her truck to the ghetto. According to one account, "Also in the back was a dog that she had trained to bark each time the Nazi guards allowed her out of the ghetto and back in. The soldiers, of course, wanted nothing to do with the dog, and its barking covered any noise made by the infants and small children. Irena managed to smuggle out approximately 2,500 children before she was finally caught. When she was captured, the Nazis beat her severely, breaking both her arms and her legs."
At www.auschwitz.dk, one of several Web sites where Louis Bülow recounts the heroes and horrors of the Holocaust, he tells Sendler’s story. In the following passage, Sendler tells of the parents’ agony over losing their children:
" ‘Can you guarantee they will live?’ Irena later recalled the distraught parents asking. But she could only guarantee they would die if they stayed. ‘In my dreams,’ she said, ‘I still hear the cries when they left their parents.’ "
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Elizabeth Cambers portraying Irena Sendler in Life in a Jar. |
Sendler, a Roman Catholic, received the title of Righteous Among the Nations in 1965 by the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial organization in Jerusalem, was made an honorary citizen of Israel in 1991 and awarded Poland’s highest distinction, the Order of the White Eagle, in 2003.
Still, her story was not widely known.
Three ninth-graders and a junior at Uniontown High School in Kansas discovered it, Bülow writes. The four won the state’s 2000 National History Day competition with a play they wrote, Life in a Jar, about Sendler’s heroic actions.
Elizabeth Cambers, Megan Stewart, Sabrina Coons and Janice Underwood helped bring international attention to Sendler’s story and have gained international fame for their efforts. Life in a Jar, already performed throughout North America and across Europe, is still performed today. Learn more about their fascinating story and Life in a Jar: The Irena Sendler Project at their site, www.irenasendler.org.
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The names of children were hidden in a jar in a friend’s garden at the base of an apple tree. |
Why the title Life in a Jar?
The only record of the true identities and whereabouts of the children Sendler helped smuggle out under fictitious names were in jars buried beneath a tree in a neighbor’s yard, Bülow said. Sendler was arrested in October 1943, tortured and sentenced to death. Her captors were bribed to stop the execution at the last minute. Later she escaped from prison.
"After the war she dug up the jars," Bülow said, "and used the notes to track down the 2,500 children she placed with adoptive families and to reunite them with relatives scattered across Europe. But most lost their
families during the Holocaust in Nazi death camps."
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