“I intend to leave, after my death, a large fund for the promotion of the peace idea but I am skeptical as to it’s results.” -Alfred Nobel
In May 2008 Irena Sendler died.
During WWII Irena got permission to work in the Warsaw Ghetto, as a plumbing/sewer specialist. She had an ulterior motive.
She knew what the Nazi’s plans for Jews were. She smuggled infants out in the bottom of her tool box and she carried in the back of her truck a burlap sack, for larger kids. She also had a dog in the back of her vehicle that she trained to bark when the Nazi soldiers let her in and out of the ghetto. The soldiers, of course, wanted nothing to do with the dog and the barking covered the any noises the children made.
Over the course of time ( every day being a risk to her life ), she managed to smuggle out and save 2500 children/infants. She was caught, and the Nazi’s broke both of her legs, her arms, and beat her nearly to death.
Irena kept a record of the names of all the children she smuggled out of the ghetto and kept them in a glass jar, buried under a tree in her back yard. After the war, she tried to locate any parents that may have survived to reunite the family. Most had been gassed. Those with no surviving relatives she helped to place into foster family homes or adoption.
In 2007 Irena was up for the Nobel Peace Prize.
She was not selected. Al Gore won, for a slide show on Global Warming.
In the immortal words of Kurt Vonnegut:
“And so it goes.”
