Oskar Schindler was immortalized in Steven Spielberg's 1993 film called 'Schindler's List'. Based on a true story about a perpetual life's loser, and failed business man turn nazi party member, Oskar Schindler was an unlikely humanitarian hero who managed to rescue 1100 Jews from from being gassed at the Auschwitz concentration camp during WW 2. Schindler kept their names on a list in order to combat the nazi's kafka-esque fetish for bureaucracy. He used the list to keep his Jewish charges 'employed' at his 'factory'.
Irena Sendler is known as 'The Other Schindler'. At the start of WW 2, Sendler was a social worker in Poland. She organized an 'underground railway' out of the Warsaw Ghetto which saved nearly 2500 Jewish children from death.
She also kept a list of names with the hope of one day reuniting those children with their parents.
Irena Sendler died one week ago, May 12th, in Poland, at the age of 98.
Using her position as a social worker, Sendler regularly entered the ghetto, smuggling around 2,500 children out in boxes, suitcases or hidden in trolleys.Life in a Jar.
The children were then placed with Polish families outside the ghetto, and given new identities.
When German police came to arrest her in 1943, an assistant managed to hide the (list of names), which Sendler later buried in a jar under an apple tree in an associate's yard. Some 2,500 names were recorded.
After her arrest, Sendler was tortured nearly to death by the Gestapo, but she would not divulge her secret or betray her comrades. The corrupt nazi swine were eventually bribed into letting her go.
And while some perverse cultures still exist which teach their children murderous hatred of Jews, other cultures celebrate the triumph of good over evil, and the love of all life, and seek to pass those lessons on from generation to generation.
Meet Megan Felt from Farlington, Kansas. In 1999, along with her classmates at Uniontown High School in Uniontown, Kansas, she researched the life and times of Irena Sendler as a class project. The fruit of that class project is a played called 'Life in a Jar'.
They have performed this program for numerous clubs, religious organizations and civic groups in the community, around the state of Kansas, all over the U.S. and in Europe (225 presentations as of October 2007).
Their cause for Irena Sendler became a national cause; they had rediscovered this courageous woman. The girls appeared on C-SPAN, National Public Radio, CBS, CNN,the Today Show and in numerous newspaper articles, and many magazine articles. They were invited to perform in Washington, D.C. and before a Jewish foundation in New York City. They have become knowledgeable on subjects such as the Holocaust, World War II, and the Polish Underground. At least five colleges have been using their letters from Irena and their project information in their curriculum.
This play honors the life of a brave woman in the face of horrible evil. We face similar evils today. Click here to find out more about the play, 'Life in a Jar'
Sendler was honoured with Israeli Yad Vashem Righteous Among the Nations medal in 1965 for her actions, and later made an honorary Israeli citizen.
She was also nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize last year but, despite her bravery, she denied she was a hero.
"The term 'hero' irritates me greatly," Sendler said in one of her last interviews. The opposite is true. I continue to have pangs of conscience that I did so little."
A big TY to DS
