Irena Sendler
"Repair the World"
by Kalei Stine
April 11, 2007
Irena Sendlerowa, Holocaust Heroine, saved 2,500 children in the Warsaw Ghetto.
"Protestant kids from rural Kansas, discover a Polish Catholic woman, who saved Jewish children. Irena Sendler and students from Uniontown, Kansas, they both have chosen to repair the world (Tikkun Olam)."
Students from rural Kansas, discover a Catholic woman, who saved Jewish children. Few had heard of Irena Sendlerowa in 1999, now after 202 presentations of Life in a Jar, a web site with huge usage and world-wide media attention, Irena is known to the world.
Irena, and the ten that went with her into the ghetto, used many, many methods to smuggle children out. There were five main means of escape: 1- using an ambulance a child could be taken out hidden under the stretcher. 2 - escape through the courthouse. 3 - a child could be taken out using the sewer pipes or other secret underground passages. 4- A trolley could carry out children hiding in a sack, in a trunk, a suitcase or something similar. 5 - if a child could pretend to be sick or was actually very ill, it could be legally removed using the ambulance.
Irena, whose code name was Jolanta, was arrested on October 20, 1943. When she was arrested, she felt almost liberated. She was then placed in the notorious Piawiak prison, where she was questioned and tortured. During the interrogation, both her legs and feet were broken.
Irena and the ZEGOTA made sure that each family hiding a child realized the child must be returned to Jewish relatives after the war. Sadly, many of the relatives died in the Holocaust.
"I was stunned and fascinated; very, very surprised; interested." Irena had said when she had first heard about the project.
