For Women's History Month...
Irena Sendler
Between 1942 and 1943, Irena Sendler and her network of 10 compatriots rescued 2,500
Jewish children from the Warsaw ghetto. Disguised as an infection-control nurse,
Sendler knocked on doors in the ghetto, asking parents and grandparents to give up
their children and grandchildren so that she could smuggle them out. Each child was
given a new Polish name and forged identity papers and hidden in foster homes,
orphanages, or convents. Sendler insisted that lists of the children be kept,
documenting their Jewish and Polish names, so that after the war they would know
their original identities. She hid the lists in milk jars that were buried in the backyard
of one of her co-conspirators.
The German occupiers suspected Sendler's involvement in the Polish Underground and in October 1943 she was arrested by the Gestapo, but she managed to hide the list of the names and locations of the rescued Jewish children, preventing this information from falling into the hands of the Gestapo. Withstanding torture and imprisonment, Sendler never revealed anything about her work or the location of the saved children. She was sentenced to death but narrowly escaped on the day of her scheduled execution, after some cohorts bribed German officials to obtain her release.
I read about this hero when I used to be on FB, but the person who posted about her was using their post to decry Irene never receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. It implied she'd been completely forgotten, but this was not the case as Poland and Israel at least had recognised her selfless heroism. When reading further, the poster seemed more upset that Al Gore and Obama had received the Nobel Peace Prize (possibly Jimmy Carter too). I then looked at the posters page and found it had some things I thought were pretty racist. The person in my friend group (an aunt I think), posted it in good faith. I left FB because of this sort of thing.
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