March 2019: Irena Sendler

Irena Sendler






Heroine: a woman having the qualities of a hero; a woman admired and emulated for her achievements and qualities; the central female figure in an event or period.

 

Irena Sendler was born in Otwock, Poland, in 1910. When the Nazis invaded in 1939, Irena was a social worker and so had access to the Warsaw Ghetto, where hundreds of thousands of Jews were imprisoned. As a member of Ã…»egota (aka Konrad Å»egota Committee, the Council to Aid Jews), she helped rescue 2,500 Jewish children from the ghetto.

She was arrested by the Nazis for saving the lives of nearly 2,500 Jewish children by smuggling them out of the Warsaw ghetto.

In 1965, Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial organization, named Irena Sendler as Righteous Among the Nations for her work saving Jewish children. In 2003, Poland honored her with its Order of the White Eagle. In 2008, Sendler was nominated for (but did not win) a Nobel Peace Prize. The story of her life was also captured in a 2009 movie 

The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler

, which starred Anna Paquin in the title role.

The Hallmark movie is well worth the watch.

See the Trailer here.