Thursday, March 15, 2007

Irena Sendler: a Hero without Glory in Her Mind but not Ours


Poland's Senate unanimously passed a resolution honoring Irena Sendler, who saved nearly 2,500 Jewish children from the Nazis by organizing a ring of 20 people to smuggle them out of the Warsaw Ghetto in baskets and ambulances.

The resolution also honors the Council for Assisting Jews, of which her ring of mostly Roman Catholic members was a part.

Sendler, now 97 and living in a Warsaw nursing home, was too frail to attend but sent a letter read by Elzbieta Ficowska, one of the children she rescued.

It said, in part: "Every child saved with my help … is the justification of my existence on this Earth, and not a title to glory."

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