Luxagraf

From the Guardian:

“Irena Sendlerowa was named a national hero by Poland yesterday for her secret work in the Warsaw ghetto. She smuggled children out through sewers and in suitcases and boxes.

Irena Sendlerowa, 97, who has been nominated for this year’s Nobel peace prize, changed the identity of the children she rescued from the Warsaw ghetto in 1942 and 1943 and placed them with Polish families.

She and her team smuggled the children out by variously hiding them in ambulances, taking them through the sewer pipes or other underground passageways, wheeling them out on a trolley in suitcases or boxes or taking them out through the old courtyard which led to the non-Jewish areas.

Unlike the German industrialist Oskar Schindler, who saved more than 1,000 Jews by employing them at his Krakow factory and is widely recognized thanks to an award-winning book and film, Mrs Sendlerowa’s story remains relatively unknown. A few years ago it was picked up in America by a group of Kansas school children who wrote a play about it, Life in a Jar.

But Mrs Sendlerowa, who is in a Warsaw nursing home, insisted she did nothing special.

In an interview she said: “I was brought up to believe that a person must be rescued when drowning, regardless of religion and nationality.”

“The term ‘hero’ irritates me greatly. The opposite is true. I continue to have pangs of conscience that I did so little.”

She was arrested in October 1943 and taken to Gestapo headquarters where she was beaten. Her legs and feet were broken and she was then driven away to be executed. But a rucksack of dollars paid by Zegota secured her release. She was knocked unconscious and left by the roadside. She still has to use crutches today as a result of her injuries.”

Visit Site: http://www.guardian.co.uk/secondworldwar/story/0,,2034182,00.html