Translation of the post of January 25

The Memorial Day: lest we forget Irena Sendler

Thanks to my friend Mario, who introduced me to the life of Irena:

Born in Warsaw in 1910 by a family of socialist tradition. Even as a child spends time with his peers of Jewish origin, and 5 years is able to speak yddish. The father is a doctor and his patients are among the many Jews he takes care of the poor for free. At his death in 1917, the Jewish community provides a subsidy to the family as a token of gratitude.

As a girl, Irena joined the scouting movement and during the university years are openly opposed to discrimination against Jewish students. Enter in the Association of Democratic Youth and the Polish Socialist Party in Polish.The outbreak of the Second World War, 29 years old and works as a social worker for the council, where, with the support of the Director of the Department (which it will be deported to Auschwitz), he helps Jews of all types of discrimination covered by part of the Nazi occupier. 

In the fall of 1940, in Warsaw, the ghetto is walled and almost 400,000 Jews have moved inside in unhygienic conditions, exacerbated by lack of food and medicine: multiply the epidemics and the mortality rate is high. As a nurse, Irena is able to obtain a pass: officially comes to pest control, in fact organized a rescue network in providing food, comfort items, clothing. When the ghetto brings the Star of David, not only to blend into the crowd, but also as a sign of solidarity. 

In 1942 he founded the secret organization "Council for help to the Jews" (Zegota) and Irena quickly becomes one of the main activists in charge of the department of Zegota children with the code name Jolanta,. The decision to liquidate the ghetto by the Germans begin to transfer the children, dressed as a nurse, hiding them in ambulances. Often the little ones are asleep with sleeping pills and locked up in a bag or a box to go to the Aryan side, making the people believe that the Gestapo is dead typhoid. After the release of the ghetto children are collected in service centers where they learn to adapt to the environment, and then assigned to families, convents or orphanages. On 20 October 1943, the Nazis arrested "Jolanta" and brutally tortured for three months without being able to talk about it, the sentence to death and transfer to the terrible prison Pawiak. Zegota fails at the last moment, to bribe a Nazi general with a large sum of money to save just before the shooting. From that moment his life changed, can not go in the ghetto have to live in hiding, as Klara Dabrowska, officially because it was shot. This does not prevent it from continuing to work with Zegota and help the Jews, coordinating the rescue of many children. It is not yet known exactly how many it has saved, but there is talk of about 2,500. During the Warsaw Uprising as a nurse working in the Health Point and after the war joined the Centre for Social Help in the capital. It helps to build orphanages, a Customer Service Centre for Mothers and Children in difficulty, some institutions in support of jobless households.It is also persecuted by the communist security services: in 1949 he was arrested and brutally interrogated on suspicion of hiding members Partisan Army (AK); in prison loses a child born prematurely. 

From 1948 to 1968 he was enrolled in the Polish Unified Workers' Party, which comes out later in 1968, in protest against the repression against students and intellectuals, and the anti-Semitic campaign launched by the government adheres to Solidarnosc in 1980. 

In the years of communism, the "People's Republic of Poland" forget her. In 1999, an American teacher, Norman Conard, impressed by its history, is by his students to stage a play called the Kansas Life in a Jar (life in a jar). The title refers to the way Irena had kept the names of the children saved, buried under an apple tree in the garden, enclosed in a glass jar, with data from real parents and adoptive parents, along with some personal effects.After the war his list, handed to the leaders of the Jewish community, allowed the children to discover their roots and find their families. The play was replicated over two hundred times in the United States and led to the creation of the foundation "Life in a Jar" which promotes the image of Sendler .. The Sendler has received numerous awards and accolades at home and abroad. In 1965 the Yad Vashem Institute has awarded the medal "Righteous Among the Nations" and in 1991 received the honorary citizenship of Israel. In 2006 the association "Children of the Holocaust" (dzieci Holocaustu) together with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has created the award "Irena Sendler" for making the world better. In 2007 she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. In 2009 he filmed the movie Children of Irena Sendler played by Oscar winner Anna Paquin. The announcement of his death, May 12, 2008 in Warsaw, suscutato great excitement in the country. Marek Edelman said of her, "It 'a great person died - a person with a big heart, with a great talent for organization, a person who has fought always on the side of the weak"

taken from the website: www.wefor.eu