this is Irena Sendler.  she died monday in Warsaw, Poland at the age of 98.  read her story, then let’s talk… 

Saviour of Warsaw Ghetto children dies

WARSAW (Reuters) – Irena Sendler, a Polish woman who saved thousands of Jewish children during World War Two by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto, died in the Polish capital on Monday after a long illness, local media said.

Israel’s Holocaust remembrance authority, Yad Vashem, said in a statement that it mourned her death.

The web portal of Poland’s leading daily, Gazeta Wyborcza, said Sendler, 98, died in Plocka Street hospital early on Monday. The hospital declined to comment on the report.

Yad Vashem chairman Avner Shalev said: “Irena Sendler’s courageous activities rescuing Jews during the Holocaust serve as a beacon of light to the world, inspiring hope and restoring faith in the innate goodness of mankind.”

Using her position as a social worker, Sendler regularly entered the ghetto, smuggling around 2,500 children out in boxes, suitcases or hidden in trolleys.

The children were then placed with Polish families outside the ghetto, created by Nazi Germany in 1940 for the city’s half a million strong Jewish population, and given new identities.

But in 1943 Sendler, who led the children’ section of the Zegota organisation which helped Jews during the war, was arrested and tortured by the Gestapo.

She only escaped execution when Zegota managed to bribe some Nazi officials, who left her unconscious but alive with broken legs and arms in the woods.

“People who stand up for others, for the weak, are very rare. The world would have been a better place if there were more of them,” Marek Edelman, the last surviving commander of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, said on national television.

His sentiments were echoed by former Polish President Lech Walesa as well as religious leaders.

Sendler was honoured with Israeli Yad Vashem Righteous Among the Nations medal in 1965 for her actions, and later made an honorary Israeli citizen.

dear Irena Sendler knew what it meant to look death in the eye for the sake of others — and most assuredly knew real fear.   but she did not tire, she did not falter, and she did not fail.  after the escape from prison, she assumed a new identity and continued her work of saving the lives of jewish children from certain death at the hands of the Nazi’s.

she was also nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize last year but, despite her bravery, she denied she was a hero.  she said this in one of her last interviews:  “The term ‘hero’ irritates me greatly. The opposite is true. I continue to have pangs of conscience that I did so little.“  

she didn’t win that Nobel Peace Prize but if she had, it would have been the first time a nobel prize was awarded in connection to the holocaust. (haaretz.com)  Al Gore won instead of Irena.

such a magnificent face and such a magnificent life.  

h/t jwf