Irena Sendler

                Few people have the opportunity to change the very lives of 2500 people.  My VIP for today is Irena Krzyzabiwska Sendler  (also referred to as Irena Sendlerowa in Poland), a Polish nurse/social worker who was part of the Polish Underground during World War II.  She was also the head of the children’s section of Zegota, an underground resistance organization in German-occupied Warsaw. Along with about two dozen other members of Zegota, Sendler went into the Warsaw Ghetto and smuggled out 2,500 Jewish children.  The children were then given false identity documents and housing outside the Ghetto, thus saving their lives during the Holocaust.

                How did Sendler accomplish such a task?  She began helping Jews when the Nazi invaded Poland in 1939.  Along with helpers, Sendler “created more than 3,000 false documents to help Jewish families, prior to joining the organized Zegota resistance and the children’s division. Helping Jews in German-occupied Poland meant all household members risked death if they were found to be hiding Jews, a punishment far more severe than in other occupied European countries.”

                In August 1943, Sendler became head of the Jewish children’s section of Zegota.  She was an employee of the Social Welfare Department and had a special permit to enter the Warsaw Ghetto.  She supposedly went there to check for signs of typhus because the Nazis were concerned the dreaded disease would spread beyond the Ghetto.  She wore a Star of David while she was in the Ghetto in order to blend in with the Jews.  Sendler was not alone in her task as other people working in the city’s Municipal Social Services department helped also as did a Polish relief organization known as the RGO (Central Welfare Council) that was tolerated by the Nazis.

                Sendler and her helpers entered the Ghetto under the pretext of inspecting sanitary conditions during a typhus outbreak.  They smuggled out babies and small children in ambulances and trams and sometimes even disguised them as packages.  Once the children were out of the Ghetto, they were placed with Polish families, in the Warsaw orphanage, or in Roman Catholic convents.  There were about thirty volunteers who went into the Ghetto and brought out hundreds of infants, young children, and even teenagers.

                When the Nazis discovered what Sendler was doing, they tortured her and sentenced her to death.  She escaped because Zegota bribed her German guards on the way to her execution.  She was not killed, but her name was listed on public bulletin boards as having been executed.  She spent the remainder of the war in hiding but continued to help Jewish children.  When the war was over, Sendler and her helpers gathered all their records and tried to unite the children with their parents, but almost all of their parents had been killed or were missing.

                In 1965 Sendler was awarded the Commander’s Cross by the Israeli Institute, recognized as “one of the Polish Righteous among the Nations” by Yad Vashem, and had a tree planted in her honor at the entrance to the Avenue of the Righteous at Yad Vashem.  The Polish communist government gave her permission to travel to Israel to be honored.

                On November 7, 2001, Sendler was awarded the Commander’s Cross with Star of the Order of Polonia Restituta.  In 2003 Sendler received a personal letter from Pope John Paul II praising her wartime efforts.  On October 10, 2003, she received the Order of the White Eagle, Poland’s highest civilian decoration, and the Jan Karski Award, “For Courage and Heart”, given by the American Center of Polish Culture in Washington, D.C. 

                At age 97 Sendler was honored by the Polish Senate on March 24, 2007.  She was unable to leave her nursing home at that time but sent a statement through Elzbieta Ficowska, one of the infants Sendler saved many years previously.  Lech Kaczynski, President of Poland, said that she “can justly be nominated for the Nobel peace Prize.”  That year she was presented as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize by the Polish government, an initiative officially supported by the State of Israel through Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the organization of Holocaust Survivors in Israel.  This nomination was also supported by authorities of Oswiecim (Auschwitz in German) because “Irena Sendler was one of the last living heroes of her generation, and demonstrated a strength, conviction and extraordinary values against an evil of an extraordinary nature.”  The Noble Peace Prize for that year went to Al Gore!

                On April 11, 2007, Sendler received the Order of the Smile (the oldest recipient of the award.  In May 2009, she was posthumously granted the Audrey Hepburn Humanitarian Award, an award presented to persons and organizations recognized for helping children.

        Sendler was the last survivor of the Children’s Section of the Zegota Council to Assist Jews.  She died in Warsaw on May 12, 2008, at age 98.

        It is claimed that Irena Sendler kept her record of the names of all the kids she smuggled out in a glass jar, buried under a tree in her back yard.  In 1999 some Protestant kids living in rural Kansas heard about Sendler and decided to tell the world about her.  Since that time, there have been at least 324 presentations of a play entitled Life in a Jar, a website http://irenasendler.org/with huge usage, a best-selling book, and world-wide media attention.  Snopes.com http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/sendler.asp#722qgmwyvO7ibe22.99 checked out this story and declared it to be true.

        I like this quote from Irena Sendler:  “Every child saved with my help is the justification of my existence on this Earth, and not a title to glory.”