Life in a Jar--Irena Sendler

Irena Sendler, a Polish Christian, recently passed away. The name is probably unfamiliar to most. Irena was responsible for the lives of 2500 Jewish children she rescued from the Warsaw Ghetto during the Nazi occupation of Poland. She worked for the German government as a medical person. Under the ruse of treating children for Typhus she entered the Warsaw Ghetto, talked Jewish parents into giving up their children, and taking the children out. All the children were smuggled out in one way or another and given to non-Jewish Poles who cared for them. Irena kept all the information in a fruit jar she had buried in the backyard of her home. Eventually she was caught by the Gestapo, severely tortured in an effort to find out where the children were, but she never broke. Finally she was sentenced to death. With the aid of a jailer she escaped prison and remained hidden until the end of the war. The secret of the children was never discovered.

This past year Irena was nominated as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize, but the prize was given to a much more high-profile person supported by the environmentalists and Hollywood--Al Gore. Perhaps if Irena would have had a good PowerPoint presentation . . . .

For more on Irena, see the following:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZSu00RN2wk