In memoriam of Mrs Irena Sendler

A great little woman has passed away. A true hero. Irena Sendler, who smuggled about 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw ghetto in World War II, died on Monday in Warsaw. She was 98.

Sendler was a 29-year-old social worker with the city’s welfare department when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939 and all the Jews in Warsaw were forced into a walled-off ghetto. Seeking to save the children, Sendler masterminded risky rescue operations. She and her assistants smuggled out babies and small children in ambulances and trams, sometimes wrapped up as packages.

“Every child saved with my help and the help of all the wonderful secret messengers, who today are no longer living, is the justification of my existence on this earth, and not a title to glory,” Sendler said in 2007 in a letter to the Polish Senate after lawmakers honored her efforts in 2007.

For her efforts, Irena Sendler was nominated to the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. Her nomination was supported by the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW), Polish President Lech Kaczynski and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. It might have been the first time a Nobel Prize would be awarded in connection to the Holocaust. However, that didn’t happen.

Instead, the Peace Prize for 2007 went to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“For their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.”

The following is a statement by IFSW.

“IFSW sends congratulations to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on winning the Nobel Peace Prize 2007. The issue of climate change is affecting all individuals and societies and it is a more than worthy cause to help begin the change in our lifestyle to prevent destruction of our planet. Social workers know from daily experience that this is an immediate and pressing social and personal issue.

‘However IFSW is deeply saddened that the life work of Nobel nominee Irena Sendler, social worker, did not receive formal recognition’, said David N Jones, IFSW President. ‘Irena Sendler and her helpers took personal risks day after day to prevent the destruction of individual lives — the lives of the children of the Warsaw ghetto. This work was done very quietly, without many words and at the risk of their lives. This is so typical of social work, an activity which changes and saves lives but is done out of the glare of publicity and often at personal risk. IFSW recognizes her again and at the same time celebrates the commitment and dedication of thousands of social workers around the world who also bring hope and care to people often living on the edge of despair,’ David N Jones concluded.”

According to Alfred Nobel’s will, the Peace Prize should be awarded “to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”

So, here we have a woman who put her life on the line every day to save people with whom some might say she had only a country and a God in common, and she was passed over for a prestigious award in favor of a man who invented the Internet and whose goal will make billions miserable for the sake of bad science.

“A prerequisite for winning the Nobel Peace Prize is making a difference,” said Boerge Brende, former Norwegian Minister of Trade, when congratulating Al Gore on winning the Peace Prize.

Irena Sendler 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.”

Here’s to you, Irena. I hope you will be remembered by many.