The Prize Doesn’t Always Go To The Most Deserving
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| Irena Sendler1910-2008 |
A 98 year-old German woman named Irena Sendler recently died. During WWII, Irena worked in the Warsaw Ghetto as a plumbing/sewer specialist. Irena smuggled Jewish children out; infants in the bottom of the tool box she carried and older children in a burlap sack she carried in the back of her truck. She also had a dog in the back that she trained to bark when the Nazi soldiers let her in and out of the ghetto. The soldiers wanted nothing to do with the dog, and the barking covered the kids’ and infants’ noises. Irena managed to smuggle out and save 2500 children. She eventually was caught, and the Nazis broke both her legs, arms and beat her severely. Irena kept a record of the names of all the kids she smuggled out and kept them in a glass jar buried under a tree in her backyard. After the war, she tried to locate any parents that may have survived and reunited some of the families. Most had been killed. She helped those children get placement into foster family homes or adopted.
Last year Irena was up for the Nobel Peace Prize. She was not selected. Al Gore won - for a slide show on Global Warming.
I'm sorry, but fuck that.
She was not German! She was Polish: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irena_Sendler. Her maiden name was Krzyżanowska (which is typical Polish name), she was born in Warsaw, and grow up in Otwock (town about 25 km from Warsaw). Even in Yad Vashem they write they she is from Poland ( http://www1.yadvashem.org/righteous_new/poland/sendler.html).
ReplyDeleteThanks for pointing that out. Regardless of her name or where she was from, I think that what she did deserves so much more recognition than she actually got. What an amazing, courageous and beautiful woman.
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