So sayeth Irena Sendler, who used her feminine genius to save 2,500 young Jews from destruction, using her position as a social worker with access to the Warsaw ghetto during Nazi rule. Christopher Blosser rounds up fascinating information about this Catholic woman, who has just died, including this account that children discovered by undertaking as study of her for a school project:
They found that Irena Sendler, as a non-Jewish social worker, had gone into the Warsaw Ghetto, talked Jewish parents and grandparents out of their children, rightly saying that all were going to die in the Ghetto or in death camps, taking the children past the Nazi guards (in body bags, saying they were ill, or using one of the many means of escape from the Ghetto-the old courthouse for example), and then adopting them into the homes of Polish families or hiding them in convents and orphanages. She made lists of the children's real names and put the lists in jars, then buried the jars in a garden, so that someday she could dig up the jars and find the children to tell them of their real identify.
Capture. Torture. Perseverence, because, as she said, "I was brought up to believe that a person must be rescued when drowning, regardless of religion and nationality." May choirs of angels come to meet you, dear sister. RIP.
What an amazing thing this woman did with her life! She saved so many children, quietly and cleverly. May the light of Heaven shine upon her.
Posted by: Barb Szyszkiewicz | Tuesday, 13 May 2008 at 02:06 PM
Think of the lives that woman blessed -- those of the children, of their parents and then of their adoptive families. That love can multiply in a situation such as the Holocaust is truly miraculous.
Posted by: eliz | Tuesday, 13 May 2008 at 10:55 PM