People who have made a difference...Irena Sendler

What has this got to do with this blog? Not much really. I just wanted to post something I found inspirational to show how the media distorts life to ensure that the political, not the personal, is promoted. I know Al Gore. He used to come into the news room and sit on my desk and try to convince me and my editor to do stories on whatever it was he and his wife Tipper were up to that week...and to tell you the truth, my vote would have been for this lady - hands down. Now, tell me this. WHY don't the media let us know these things?


A 98-year old lady named Irena died recently (May 12, 2008). It was a sad day for the 3,000 Jewish men and women who owed her their lives and the hundreds of others who knew of her and her work.
Why?
Because during WWII Irena, a German, got permission to work in the Warsaw Ghetto.
She had an ulterior motive.
Being German she KNEW what the Nazi’s plans were for the Jews.
Irena smuggled infants out of the Ghetto in many ways. There were five main means of escape: 1- using an ambulance a child could be taken out hidden under the stretcher. 2 - escape through the courthouse. 3 - a child could be taken out using the sewer pipes or other secret underground passages. 4- A trolley could carry out children hiding in a sack, in a trunk, a suitcase or something similar. 5 - if a child could pretend to be sick or was actually very ill, it could be legally removed using the ambulance. In her truck she kept large burlap bags for older children. She also had a dog in the back that she trained to bark when the soldiers let her in and out of the Ghetto. The soldiers of course wanted nothing to do with the dog and left her alone. The barking also covered the noises the kids and infants would make. During the time and course of doing this she managed to save 2,500 infants and children. Eventually she was caught and the Nazi’s broke both her legs and arms and tortured and beat her.
Not only did Irena keep a record of the names of all the children in a glass jar buried in a friend’s garden, after the war she tried to locate any parents so she could reunite them with their children. Most of the parents had been gassed. The kids she helped were placed into foster homes.
Last year Irena was up for the Nobel Peace Prize.
She lost.
Al Gore won, for a slide show on Global Warming.
Check it out: http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/sendler.asp Snopes - TRUE.
www.irenasendler.org for her story and http://www.irenasendler.org/facts.asp for the details. A play has been written about Irena called “Life in a glass jar,” for the names of those children she rescued that she kept buried in a jar.