Irena Sendler

May 14 2008 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

SHE was a Catholic nurse with enough bravery to fill a cathedral, and when the skies were dark and the world was mad, she wore a Star of David on her arm to save thousands of Jewish children from the Nazi death camps.

The attitude of Gentile Poles to their Jewish population was often unsympathetic, even before the German invasion in World War II.

But this was not true of Dr Stanislaw Krzyzanowska, a physician, who ran a hospital in a Warsaw suburb of Otwock and treated poor Jews. His philosophy was that if you saw someone drowning, you should jump into the river to help them, whether you could swim or not.

It was a noble ideal, but the good doctor died of typhus in 1917, having already set the example of respecting humans of all races, which his devoted daughter, Irena, would follow.

Irena married Mieczyslaw Sendler and worked as a social care nurse. Soon after the invasion, conditons deteriorated drastically for more than 400,000 Jews crammed in the ghetto.

Irena later spoke of how her young eyes had witnessed sights that should never have been seen – babies dead on the streets and SS officers shooting at skulls.

She joined Zegota, an organisation bringing aid to the Jews. Disguised as sanitation workers, Irena and her comrades entered the ghetto with medicines and aid. Irena took special responsibility for the children.

By 1942, thousands of people were being deported to the Treblinka death camp. Under immense personal danger, Irena wore a Star of David so she could mix with the Jews.

Children were smuggled out in boxes and parcels, even coffins. They had been parted from their doomed parents, the saddest part of Irena’s work.

Like Oskar Schindler, Irena kept a list of those she had saved, in the hope of reuniting them with surviving family after the war.

But the Nazis were alerted to these activities in 1943 and raided her home. A friend hid the list.

In prison, Irena resisted torture, which included the breaking of her legs and feet, without releasing the names of the children housed in orphanages and convents.

After the war, she divorced and remarried, having three children. In 2003 she was awarded Poland’s Order of the White Eagle and in 2007 she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Irena Sendler, great humanitarian; born February 15, 1910, died May 12, 2008.