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The Irena Sendler story gives you hope. She was the nurse that forged her way into the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II and helped rescue 2,500 children from certain death.
The story was discovered by our three, seventh grade girls from Uniontown, Kansas, who wrote a play about Irena’s deeds and received world acclaim. “Life in a Jar,” would play hundreds of times and lead the girls to Warsaw to meet the little, old Gestapo tortured lady herself.
Even in Poland, Irena’s story had remained dormant and forgotten until the girls showed new light from a different generation that transcended generations.
Because of the girls, the Polish Government, U.S. Embassy, Israel Government and the Jewish community in Kansas City were now keenly aware of the story that soon had a life of its own.
In Warsaw, the girls were thrilled to meet Irena who was 95 and spent most of her life on crutches because of the torture she endured. Officials, survivors, survivor families and the press were now fully involved. AP, CNN, Reuters, and the BBC made the “feel good,” meeting event into an international spectacle.
The girls would travel to Warsaw four more times, each trip meeting new survivors who owed Irena and her team, life. Once they were greeted by over 200 of “Irena’s children,” who were now old themselves. Just think of their family lineage going forward. It's incredible.
All this attention was hard for Irena, she professed, “the word hero irritates me greatly. The opposite is true. I continue to have pangs of consciousness that I did so little.” It obviously brings back memories of death and darkness she longs to put aside, but she loved those girls from Kansas!
There were other Irena Sendlers who battled the Nazis from inside. Perhaps the best known was Oskar Schindler employing and saving over 1,000 Jews in his factory. Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat working in Budapest, saved thousands by issuing protective passports and harboring Jews in the Swedish compound. His fate remains a mystery; all that is known is he was arrested on espionage charges by the Russians in 1945 and never heard from again. Virginia Hall, Johan Van Hulst, Lois Gunden, Sir Nicholas Winton, Dr Eugene Lazowski and many, many more, all heroes who helped save humanity from the brink.
What I have trouble getting my mind around is this all happened not long ago to my parents’ generation. Genocide, “the final solution,” extermination camps and ethnic cleansing all those words really still tick me off! It may be a fault of mine, but as an historian, I’m slow to forgive, and never forgets. I still won’t buy a German car.
If you would like to hear more of my frustration with parts of humanity, go to bobfordshistory.com. I traveled to Ft. Scott, Kansas, and produced several podcasts at the Lowell Milken Center for Unsung Heroes with the girls’ history teacher and Executive Director of the Museum Norm Conard.
Central Europe was devastated after the war, with the Marshall Plan only benefiting western Europe, eastern Europe was now under Russian control. The slaughter ceased but servitude and anti-Semitism continued just in another form, communism.
Israel became a salvation, but only if you could get there.
Irena was 98 now and her time was running out. She had received the prestigious Righteous Among Nations award from Israel, presented to non-Jews who risked their own life saving Jewish lives during the Holocaust. She also received several Polish honors and other humanitarian awards for her actions.
But now, rumor had it, she was being considered for the Nobel Peace Prize!
Alfred B. Nobel created the annual Prize awarded first in 1901, for those who have, “done the most or best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”
What a wonderful tribute not only to Irena, but the thousands of unsung heroes who stood up to tyranny should she win the Nobel. Even though secrecy prevailed in the Nobel Committee investigation, everyone knew that, survivors, eyewitnesses and government officials had been interviewed.
All were excited when on October 12, 2007, Committee Chair, Ole Danbolt Mjo, took to the Oslo stage, with three teen age girls half a world away holding their breath, announcing…“And the winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize is... Al Gore.”
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