A true hero passed away: Irena Sendler

Maritxu · 05-20-2008, 11:42 PM

I don't know if you guys even know about her, but her story is one of the most inspiring things I have read in a long time.
May she RIP, God obviously has another angel.
Irena Sendler - Telegraph

Quote:

Social worker who saved 2,500 Jewish children in Warsaw and was tortured by the Gestapo.

Irena Sendler, who died yesterday aged 98, is credited with having saved the lives of some 2,500 Jewish children in the Warsaw ghetto during the Second World War.
By 1942 the Germans had herded some 500,000 Polish Jews into the ghetto – an area of about one square kilometre – to await transportation to the extermination camps. Starvation and disease, especially typhoid, were endemic.
Irena Sendler was a Polish Roman Catholic social worker in the city who already had links with Zegota, the code name for the Council for Aid to Jews, and in December 1942 Zegota put her in charge of its children's department.
Wearing nurses' uniforms, she and a colleague, Irena Schultz, were sent into the ghetto with food, clothes and medicine, including a vaccine against typhoid. It soon became clear, however, that the ultimate destination of many of the Jews was to be the Treblinka death camp, and Zegota decided to try to save as many children as possible. [...]

Using the codename "Jolanta", and wearing a Star of David armband to identify herself with the Jewish population, Irena Sendler became part of this escape network. One baby was spirited away in a mechanic's toolbox. [...]

The Nazis took Irena Sendler to the Pawiak prison, where she was tortured; although her legs and feet were broken, and her body left permanently scarred, she refused to betray her network of helpers or the children whom she had saved.[...]

Irena Sendler: We are not heroes. I continue to have qualms of conscience that I did so little

Maritxu · 05-21-2008, 03:34 PM

It's funny how the nobel prize see was nominated to ended up in Gore's hands... (trying to get people to the thread

)

Sparta · 05-21-2008, 03:38 PM

Comon, Al Gore took her nobel prize?

Maritxu · 05-21-2008, 03:40 PM

Amazing huh? She saved 2500 children, but of course he let us all know about global warning (when we already knew). Easy to see who wins

Sparta · 05-21-2008, 03:46 PM

How Gore could accept it is beyond comprehension.

caffeine · 05-23-2008, 05:39 AM

It wasn't her prize - there were almost 200 nominees.

Though I agree giving it to Gore was a bit absurd. And the IPCC is meant to be a neutral, scientific body - giving them a peace prize together with an alarmist publicist just undermines their credibility.

Maritxu · 05-23-2008, 05:48 AM

I don't know if it was her prize, but she did sure deserve it, don't you think?

caffeine · 05-23-2008, 06:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Maritxu

I don't know if it was her prize, but she did sure deserve it, don't you think?

I wouldn't want to commit to an answer without knowing who the other nominees are. Maybe there's some unsung hero on the list who's dedicated the last two decades of their life to saving victims of the Congo war at great personal risk to themselves.

Also, the Peace prize isn't supposed to be just handed out to the person we're most impressed with. It's supposed to go "to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses."

Now, you can say Irena Sendler did excellent work for fraternity between nations - Jews can look to her and see someone from a nation renowned for its history of anti-Semitism, who was willing to go to great personal risk to save innocent Jewish lives; but that doesn't necessarily qualify her as most fitting the above description.

Djinn · 05-23-2008, 07:55 AM

Thumbs up all the way. It also sounds like her story would have made for a movie at least as fascinating as "Schindler's List."

Quote:

In her latter years Irena Sendler was cared for in a Warsaw nursing home by Elzbieta Ficowska, who – in July 1942, at six months old – had been smuggled out of the ghetto by Irena in a carpenter's workbox.

Nice.

Invayne · 05-23-2008, 01:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Maritxu

I don't know if it was her prize, but she did sure deserve it, don't you think?

A whole lot more than Gore did, and a whole lot of others, for that matter.