I'm always amazed by the incredible acts of heroism that occurred in Poland during World War II that seem to have gone pretty much un-noticed by the West. One such story is Irena Sendler a lady we hadn't heard of (despite living in Warsaw) until the announcement of her death on Monday aged 98.Irena and her team organised the rescue of 2,500 children from the Warsaw Ghetto between 1940 and 1943, children who would have otherwise probably died at the hands of the Nazis.
It is an incredible story, and one that also has to be put in the context of the fact that during the period of German occupation anyone in Poland assisting a Jew would have been executed along with their family.
Sendler smuggled young children and babies out of the Jewish ghetto and placed them with families, orphanages, hospitals and convents. They were given a chance of survival by being raised as Catholics. In the hope of one day re-uniting the children with their parents Sendler wrote the children's names on slips of paper which were later buried in a jar to avoid being found by the Gestapo.
She was captured imprisoned, tortured and remarkably escaped execution. After the war she tried to reunite children with any living parent. Sadly almost all of the saved children's parents had died in the Treblinka death camp.
Please read more about Irena Sendler here or here
What I find amazing is that Irena Sendler did not think of herself as a hero. She claimed no credit for her actions. "I could have done more" she once said.
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