The seeds of this week’s Inspiration were planted earlier this week when I received an email from my brother Don. He forwarded me a story about a brave and heroic woman whose courageous actions during World War II helped in saving the lives of thousands of Jewish children.
I usually begin crafting my Friday message earlier in the week, but couldn’t do so this week due to an unusually conflicted schedule. This morning as I attempt to string words together in some meaningful fashion amid the seemingly all too common yet still horrific carnage that occurred last night at a movie theatre in my wonderful hometown, my thoughts keep returning to those seeds contained within my brother’s message.
As I passed by the theatre as I do every morning driving to my office, I noted that its parking lot was packed with news media broadcast trucks. I know that this senseless slaughter will be broadcast worldwide today, causing many to ponder as to whether civilization has become devoid of civility. It hasn’t. I firmly believe that there are more peacemakers in our world than there are embracers of violence. They just don’t seek to be, nor are they often enough sought out as newsmakers. That’s a shame. In times such as this, our society desperately needs “equal time” for the peacemakers of our past and present to be headlined and lauded so that evil and tragedy never singularly commands the center stage.
Irena Sendler was born as Irena Krzyzanowska on February 15, 1910 in Warsaw, Poland to Dr. Stanislaw Krzyzanowski, a physician, and his wife, Janina. Her father died in February 1917 from typhus contracted while treating patients whom his colleagues refused to treat in fear of contracting the disease. Among those he treated were many Jews. After his death, Jewish community leaders offered Irena’s mother help in paying for her education. She studied Polish literature at Warsaw University. As a student, Irena refused to remain silent when confronted by hate and discrimination. She opposed the ghetto-bench system that existed at some prewar Polish universities and, in protest, she defaced her grade card. Her public protest resulted in her suspension from the University of Warsaw for three years.
In 1939, when the Germans invaded Warsaw, Irena, who was a Catholic, began helping Jews by offering them food and shelter, but when the Warsaw Ghetto was erected by the Nazis in 1940, Irena could no longer openly help the isolated Jews. The Ghetto was an area the size of New York’s Central Park and 450,000 Jewish people were forced into it. Irena would not be deterred in her effort to confront this pervasive all-powerful evil. She joined Zegota, a Polish underground group formed to assist the Jewish people. She soon became the head of that group’s Children’s Division.
Using her papers as a Polish social worker and papers from one of the workers of the Contagious Disease Department (who was a member of the underground Zegota), Irena was able to gain access into the Warsaw Ghetto with the goal of helping children escape. She and ten other underground members who accompanied her into the ghetto, used many, many methods to smuggle nearly 2,500 children out. These included using ambulances wherein a child could be taken out by hiding them under the stretcher. Many were also rescued by taking them out through sewer pipes or other secret underground passages. They even carried out children by hiding them in a sack, in a trunk, a suitcase, or something similar and then transporting them out of the ghetto via the trolley system. . If a child could pretend to be sick or was actually very ill, it could be legally removed using the ambulance. They even used a Catholic church that was located next to the ghetto. The entrance leading to it was “sealed” by the Germans, but if a child could speak good Polish and rattle off some Christian prayers it could be smuggled in through the “sealed” entrance and later taken to the Aryan side of Warsaw.
Once the children were safely beyond the walls of the ghetto, Irena and her network would place them with sympathetic families with the understanding that the child would have be returned to Jewish relatives after the war. Irena documented where each child was placed on small strips of paper which she placed in glass jars and buried in various locations known only to her.
Irena (code name Jolanta) was arrested by the Germans on October 20, 1943 after being named by an informer as a member of the underground. She was placed in the notorious Piawiak prison, where she was constantly questioned and tortured. During her internment she was brutally beatened, having both her legs and feet fractured. The Nazis wanted the names of the Zegota leaders, their addresses and the names of others involved in their operation. Irena fed them the false version that she and her collaborators had prepared in the event they were captured. Ultimately she received a death sentence. She was to be shot. Unbeknown to her, Zegota had bribed the German executioner who helped her escape. On the day following her escape the Germans loudly proclaimed her execution. Posters were put up all over the city with the news that she was shot. Irena read the posters herself.
During the remaining years of the war, she lived hidden, just like the children she rescued. Irena was the only one who knew where the children were to be found. When the war was finally over, she dug up the bottles and began the job of finding the children and trying to match them with a living parent. Tragically, almost all the parents of the children Irena saved, died at the Treblinka death camp.
During the ensuing years, Irena and her cohort’s heroic exploits and efforts remained unknown. Like many heroes, Irena did not think it appropriate to invite publicity to something she felt any caring and engaged human would, or should do, when confronted by evil.
Then in September of 1999, while researching for a National History Day project four rural Kansas students (Megan Stewart, Liz Cambers, Sabrina Coons and Jessica Shelton) discovered the story of a Polish Catholic woman who saved Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto during the Holocaust. They found a 1994 issue of U.S. News & World Report wherein Irena was mentioned in a story titled “Other Schindler’s.” Inspired by her story, the students subsequently began the Life in a Jar Project which gathered over 4,000 pages documenting both Irena and Zegota’s efforts to save the Warsaw Jewish children during the war.
Irena’s story became known to the world through the Life in a Jar Project. The author of a subsequent book detailing Irena’s efforts during the war was quoted as saying, “Everybody I talked to in working on this book, said that the international and Polish interest in Irena Sendler’s activities was begun and provoked by the activities of these Kansas girls…”
The relevance of Irena’s story to what seems to be an endless reel of tragic and senseless events occurring in this country and around the world today is that while evil is pervasive, goodness is also, and no matter how hard evil tries, it will never match the power of goodness, because evil is ultimately self-destructive. Its goal may be to corrupt others, but through its own process it corrupts itself.
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God” – Matthew 5:9
Let us all pray for the agony of those who grieve in loss today, but let us also pray with confidence and conviction that the goodness that dwells in the hearts and souls of mankind shall never be vanquished, for it is not linked to our flesh and blood, but rather to our immortal spirit.
May your weekend remain AWE-full!
William J. “Bill” Bacqué