Irena Sendler is little known to many individuals. Her story is not only remarkable, but also an inspirational story of courage, ethics, and the determination to do the correct thing during the Holocaust. During a time of extreme adversity, she risked her own life in order to save Jewish children.
“Irena Sendler created and led a conspiracy of women who moved in and out of Warsaw’s Jewish Ghetto disguised as nurses employed by Warsaw’s Health Department. Though they worked under the guise of merely attempting to prevent and contain the spread of Typhus and Spotted Fever, Sendler and her brave cohorts emerged each time with the children of consenting Jewish parents. The children were sometimes sedated and hidden inside boxes, suitcases and coffins as a means of rescuing them from their imminent deportation to death camps. They were given new identities and placed with Polish families and in convents. Sendler kept a hidden record of their birth names and where they were placed with the hope that they would some day be reunited with their own families.” This blurb was taken off the CBS website.
Not a Jew herself, but a Polish Catholic social worker, she was a woman of great strength, and her unstoppable actions saved approximately 2,500 Jewish children. She kept their names hidden in jars, which she either buried or gave over to a trusted individual before being deported to Auschwitz. She was eventually saved from death. The jars were dug up after the war, and she was able to contact many of the children she had saved, reuniting some with their relatives. The previous sentences are just a minor blurb regarding all of her accomplishments. Her selflessness and acts of human kindness don’t go unnoticed in my memory.
CBS will be broadcasting “The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler, tonight (Sunday April 19th). I will be one of the viewers. I wouldn’t miss an opportunity to see this film about Irena Sendler, and the history behind her amazing acts of courage. The TV film is based on the book “Mother of the Children of the Holocaust: The Irena Sendler Story”. She is not only an inspiration, but a true heroine. She is one of the Righteous Among the Nations, at Yad Vashem. Irena Sendler died May 8, 2008. Her name should not be forgotten, but should be remembered through the decades to come.
To learn more about Irena Sendler, visit the Auschwitz website.
Visit the Irena Sendler Project, Life in a Jar.
Visit this link at Yad Vashem to learn more about Irena Sendler.
Visit CBS to learn more about the film, “The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler“.
Visit the Museum of the History of Polish Jews for more information.
Visit Wikipedia and read their information.
“Life in a Jar, the Irena Sendler Story“
Visit the Association of the Children of the Holocaust in Poland, for more biographical information.
I will remember her on Holocaust Remembrance Day/Yom Hashoah, beginning Monday eve.
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© Copyright 2007 – All Rights Reserved – No permission is given or allowed to reuse my photography, book reviews, writings, or my poetry in any form/format without my express written consent/permission.
Sunday April 19, 2009 – 25th of Nisan, 5769
An Open Letter to The Nobel Peace Prize Committee
October 13, 2007
Irena Sendler recounts that if mothers waiting in the Ghetto for their death were unable to separate themselves from their children, whom only she was able to rescue, Irena Sendler would one day return to find an empty apartment. The families would already be on trains to Treblinka. Only then did Irena Sendler know for certain that no one in the world was able to save that child – that in a few hours a horrible death would await him or her in a gas chamber – because only she could have, and now it was too late.
No League of Nations, no humanitarian organization, no International Red Cross, no Catholic Church, no Pope, no association of Protestant Churches, no court, no government, no parliament, no president, no prime minister, no marshal, no king, no police, and no army was able to help these children; nor did they. No European nor world institution, no system of collective safeguards created to thwart the massive and genocidal murder of the innocent and defenseless was able to save these children; nor did it.
During World War II, in the geographic heart of Christian Europe, Europeans for years were murdering millions of people for racial reasons.
For the first time in history, Europeans were also murdering children en masse. Jewish and Gypsy children, like their parents, were starved to death, tortured, subjected to pseudo-scientific experimentation, were victimized by professional killing squads (Einsatzgruppen), were buried and burned alive, were gunned down, and foremost, were murdered in the gas chambers of death camps. In fact a certain constituency of the adult world came to the conclusion in those years that killing parents was not enough, that killing children was just as proper, and just as necessary. These people had at their disposal both the means and power to do so. And thus they killed over a million and a half children. These children were not murdered by lunatics, but by the organized, precise, and efficient machine of a totalitarian state.
Europe did not want, could not, and was not able to do anything about this. One part of Europe was unaware. Another part of Europe was ambivalent. Yet another part of Europe was helpless and powerless. Europe in general was guilty of looking the other way, of cowardice, and of a lack of imagination. Still another part of Europe was guilty of active participation in atrocities. The only help these children received came rather sporadically from a few, regular, unknown people who believed their lives were not worth more than the lives of these children; that is why they risked themselves. These people saved lives, but they also preserved the very fundamental values without which life has no meaning at all.
Irena Sendler, a thirty-year-old Polish woman from Warsaw, along with a group of co-conspirators, rescued the largest number of children during those years. Irena Sendler, without waiver, risked her life, and acted with bravery and efficiency to save them. She would place a band with the Star of David on her arm, walk through gates of the Ghetto, and thus would begin her fight with the most powerful extermination machine in human history. She would take Jewish children by the hand, and risking her own life, would secure not only their life, but also the lives of their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. It is necessary to remember this to understand the words of the Talmud: “He who saves one life, saves the entire world.”
Irena Sendler saved this world day-by-day, child-by-child, and the world didn’t even know it.
Finally, after more than six decades, there came a moment for the world to know who saved it. Irena Sendler was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize – at ninety-seven years of age – as the last living representative of a small number of the epoch’s moral giants who acted precisely when Europe was at its moral nadir.
The world must know about Irena Sendler because the world will need her again, more than once. The world needs her constantly and continually. Wherever organizations, institutions, and collective safeguards against lawlessness and mass murder fail, Irena Sendler is essential. When racial, class, or religious hatred comes to power, and has the means of mass-murder at its disposal, everything fails except the will of a single individual and their determination to save human life at the cost of their own. Irena Sendler never fails.
Today we can only hope that there is an Irena Sendler of 2007 in Darfur, where an official UN report claims there are over a million children exposed to death, rape, and torture, without the protection of even a single humanitarian institution.
The nomination of Irena Sendler for the Nobel Peace Prize gave you the chance to recognize the universal message of peace embodied in her character and her work.
Yet after sixty years, you, the members of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, an honored European and world institution, failed to recognize the work of Irena Sendler as deserving of the highest distinction in service of the idea of peace. Saving the lives of over 2,500 Jewish children from certain death by Irena Sendler at a time when Europe was paralyzed by fear and powerlessness, and the punishment for helping even one Jewish child was death, did not merit distinction in your eyes.
You failed to recognize that in extreme situations, when peace is not only endangered but becomes a dead concept, if it is necessary to save innocent life, humanity can only count on Irena Sendler’s stand, and the bearing of those who think and act as she did, no matter the time and place.
You failed to recognize that this was the final chance to honor one of the last living persons who did the most for peace, not in a military or political sense, but entirely in the real-world sense, where matters of life and death of innocents actually take place when the world’s ethical compass is destroyed.
You failed to recognize that awarding Irena Sendler the Nobel Peace Prize would not award the past as much as it could be your stand for the future of the world.
That same world that Irena Sendler remembers from the Warsaw Ghetto: Did the World help me when I was saving these children? I walked the streets, crying over my helplessness…
In January, 2007, on the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Irena Sendler said: The world has learned nothing from the lessons of World War II and the Shoah.
By your decision, announced on October 12th, 2007, you proved that you, as the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, do in fact belong to that same world that had understood little and had learned even less.
Paul Jedrzejewski
By: Paul on April 19, 2009
at 5:54 pm
Paul: My response to the letter you sent the Nobel Peace Prize Committee can not articulate exactly how I feel about the events that the Committee chose to ignore and under-appreciate.
I just want you to know that I appreciate your visiting me, and I certainly empathize with your thoughts and feelings, as mine are much the same. I was angered, indeed, by the Nobel Peace Prize Committee’s lack of comprehension of exactly what Irena Sendler endured in order to protect those thousands of children. And, at age 97, she was most deserving of the honor. To say that she was nominated, in and of itself, is not enough. She deserved that Prize, the award that theoretically stands for peace, and what individuals have done to attain peace for humankind. What more can one person endeavor to fulfill than what Irena Sendler accomplished?!
Much the same is occurring now in Darfur, yes, you are right. I fight, in my small manner for the rights of mothers and fathers, grandparents and children. It is the children that haunt me, endlessly. Those faces that stare at you in the middle of the day when you didn’t think that your thoughts involved them. It is those innocent victims who are now facing the same crisis of those children during the Holocaust/Shoah.
Speaking out is imperative and a must in order to bring the issues to the forefront. It takes individuals like yourself, who speak out, in order to bring illumination into the world, and to educate others on the inadequacies in various sectors of society, the business world, the political arena, and the humanitarian community, as a whole.
Thank you, once again, Paul. May others read your “Open Letter”, and may it give them food for thought, for the past, present and future of mankind. Humanity is best served by concerned and caring individuals like you.
~~Lorri
By: jewwishes on April 19, 2009
at 6:52 pm
Thanks for reminding us of Irena Sendler’s name!
By the way, I have an award for you. It’s way below the read-a-thon posts, I’m afraid. Sorry about that
By: Kathrin on April 20, 2009
at 7:28 am
Thank you, Kathrin. I will check it out.
By: jewwishes on April 20, 2009
at 1:23 pm
Thank you for the post on Irena Sendler. You are right to say that she has gained respect in her own by the Jewish community and the world of the righeous Gentiles not to put her in the same classification of Oskar Schindler. I personally will say this he was out for saving his own skin. Not for humanitarian reasons. He was a womanizer and a opportunist. I don’t mean to get on the soap box. But too many people think he was a great man. Yes, even though he was saving his own skin he did save many people.
By: Seaside Book Worm on April 23, 2009
at 12:06 am
Thanks for visiting, Susan.
Irena Sendler was an amazing woman.
By: jewwishes on April 23, 2009
at 9:42 am
Irena Sendler is an amazing lady. It just goes to show what one person is capable of doing. It is a shame that she suffered so much in her life.
Would you know how many of the children she saved survived? There was a mention of her bilogical children on Wikipedia, but no names or other information.
I looked her up on Wikipedia earlier today, after receiving an email.. they mentioned biological children. Does she have any descendants?
Thank you for the post and all the links, or else I never would have known of her. I must have missed the obituary columns.
By: AJ on August 28, 2009
at 4:39 pm
AJ, thank you for visiting. Yes, she was an amazing humanitarian…always thinking of the children.
By: jewwishes on August 28, 2009
at 7:22 pm