Irena Sendler: From the Chasiday Umos HaOlam
Guest Post By Laurie R.
Of all the projects that honor the Chasiday Umos HaOlam, one of the most unique is the Irena Sendler project, also known as "Life in a Jar." The project, which includes a display, a book, a website and a play, honors a brave and selfless Polish woman.
Irena Sendler joined the Zagota underground soon after Poland was invaded by the Nazis in 1939. Zagota members specialized in helping Jews escape the Nazis and, as part of this effort, Sendler obtained a pass which allowed her to enter the Warsaw ghetto as a social worker who specialized in infectious diseases.
Once in the ghetto, Sendler quickly discerned that the fate of the Jews would most certainly be death. She concentrated on bringing young children out of the ghetto, sometimes smuggling them through the Old Courthouse on the edge of the ghetto and at other times sedating them and hiding them in toolboxes or under seats on trams. Sendler and her Zagota assistants also led many children out of the ghetto through the sewer pipes which ran under the city.
Some of the children that Sendler brought out were orphans but others still had living parents and Sendler had to work to convince the parents that sending their child away was the only way that a child might survive. She later noted that she had to "talk the parents out of their children."
Sendler found a foster family for each child and documented the child's name and adoptive family on tissue paper which she buried in glass jars in her backyard. Sendler's goal was to eventually reunite the children with their families or, if that proved impossible, with their community.
In 1943 Sendler was arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned and tortured, yet she never revealed where any of the children were located. Zagota members succeeded in bribing a prison guard and obtaining Sendler's release and she lived out the remainder of the war in hiding.
Irena Sendler succeeded in saving over 2500 Jewish children, double the number that Oskar Schindler saved, but her story was almost lost to history until a group of Kansas schoolgirls stumbled on a short account of the incident and began to investigate. Their research culminated in the Life in a Jar project which through the Lowell Milken Center honored Sendler and brought this chapter of Holocaust studies to international attention.
Irena Sendler joined the Zagota underground soon after Poland was invaded by the Nazis in 1939. Zagota members specialized in helping Jews escape the Nazis and, as part of this effort, Sendler obtained a pass which allowed her to enter the Warsaw ghetto as a social worker who specialized in infectious diseases.
Once in the ghetto, Sendler quickly discerned that the fate of the Jews would most certainly be death. She concentrated on bringing young children out of the ghetto, sometimes smuggling them through the Old Courthouse on the edge of the ghetto and at other times sedating them and hiding them in toolboxes or under seats on trams. Sendler and her Zagota assistants also led many children out of the ghetto through the sewer pipes which ran under the city.
Some of the children that Sendler brought out were orphans but others still had living parents and Sendler had to work to convince the parents that sending their child away was the only way that a child might survive. She later noted that she had to "talk the parents out of their children."
Sendler found a foster family for each child and documented the child's name and adoptive family on tissue paper which she buried in glass jars in her backyard. Sendler's goal was to eventually reunite the children with their families or, if that proved impossible, with their community.
In 1943 Sendler was arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned and tortured, yet she never revealed where any of the children were located. Zagota members succeeded in bribing a prison guard and obtaining Sendler's release and she lived out the remainder of the war in hiding.
Irena Sendler succeeded in saving over 2500 Jewish children, double the number that Oskar Schindler saved, but her story was almost lost to history until a group of Kansas schoolgirls stumbled on a short account of the incident and began to investigate. Their research culminated in the Life in a Jar project which through the Lowell Milken Center honored Sendler and brought this chapter of Holocaust studies to international attention.
posted by rabbi neil fleischmann @ 7:53 PM
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