Irena Sendlerowa's Amazing Story
Dr. Horn suggested we go to http://www.irenasendler.0rg/ and read the account there about Irena Sendlerowa, and the 4 young students from Kansas who researched her story, then turned it into a world-wide series of events and awards.
Irena is now 97 years old, living in Warsaw, Poland. She is Polish Catholic and when she learned about children being killed in the holocaust, she began smuggling them out and placing them with families, in orphanages, in hiding places. She is credited with saving 2,500 children! (Schindler of Schindler's List saved the lives of 1000 people, to give some perspective to that number.
Irena put lists of the children's real names into jars and buried the jars, in order to be able to find out their actual given names when the time came for them to come out of hiding.
A schoolteacher in Kansas had seen a small newspaper clipping about Irena and he gave the information to the 4 young girls to make a year-long research project from the information. Little did he know the girls would find Irena herself, and also develop a presentation about the glass jars that took off around the world. The girls, sponsored by local business people, traveled to Poland and met with Irena; a meeting was also arranged with Irena and the surviving hidden children.
What a story this is! Please check out the site for pictures and much, much more about Irena. Think about the generations she saved; Hitler's Nazis wanted to destroy women and children in order to completely wipe out the Jews (and Gypsies and mentally ill Germans and Jehovah's Witnesses, and others not 100% Aryan). Yet someone as compassionate and courageous as Irena, who suffered beatings and brutalities, kept on rescuing the children.
Irena is now 97 years old, living in Warsaw, Poland. She is Polish Catholic and when she learned about children being killed in the holocaust, she began smuggling them out and placing them with families, in orphanages, in hiding places. She is credited with saving 2,500 children! (Schindler of Schindler's List saved the lives of 1000 people, to give some perspective to that number.
Irena put lists of the children's real names into jars and buried the jars, in order to be able to find out their actual given names when the time came for them to come out of hiding.
A schoolteacher in Kansas had seen a small newspaper clipping about Irena and he gave the information to the 4 young girls to make a year-long research project from the information. Little did he know the girls would find Irena herself, and also develop a presentation about the glass jars that took off around the world. The girls, sponsored by local business people, traveled to Poland and met with Irena; a meeting was also arranged with Irena and the surviving hidden children.
What a story this is! Please check out the site for pictures and much, much more about Irena. Think about the generations she saved; Hitler's Nazis wanted to destroy women and children in order to completely wipe out the Jews (and Gypsies and mentally ill Germans and Jehovah's Witnesses, and others not 100% Aryan). Yet someone as compassionate and courageous as Irena, who suffered beatings and brutalities, kept on rescuing the children.
Labels: holocaust, Irena Sendlerowa
posted by Marion | 10:40 AM
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