(A hat tip to Arwen, who posted this story over to me.)
Because United Patriots celebrates soldiers against the Left, I want to mention two here on Good Friday.
The first is Irena Sendler, shown here,
who, at a much younger age, in Poland, ferreted out over 2,500 young Jewish children, to escape what would later be known as the Holocaust.
She died recently at age 98, but until 1999, few had ever heard of her. (Wait for the rest of story, below.)
Irena Sendlerowa (commonly known as Irena Sendler) was born in 1910. She studied at Warsaw University and was a social worker in Warsaw when the German occupation of Poland began in 1939. Working with a network of other social workers, mostly women, she smuggled children and adults out of the Warsaw ghetto and hid them safely until the end of the war. Sendler took great risks, obtaining forged papers for the children, disguising herself as an infection control nurse, diverting German occupation funds for the support of children in hiding. She entered the Warsaw ghetto, sometimes two and three times a day, and talked Jewish parents into giving up their children. She drugged the babies with sedatives and smuggled them past Nazi guards in gunny sacks, boxes and coffins. She helped the older children and adults escape through the sewers, through secret openings in the wall, through the courthouse, through churches, any clever way she and her network could evade the Nazis. Once outside the ghetto walls, Sendler gave the children false names and documents and placed them in convents, orphanages and homes with Polish families. Her hope was that after the war she could reunite the children with surviving relatives, or at least return their Jewish identities. To that end she kept thin tissue paper lists of each child’s Jewish name, their Polish name and address. She hid the lists in glass jars buried under an apple tree in the back yard of one of her co-conspirators. In 1943 Irena Sendler was arrested, tortured and sentenced to death. She never divulged the location of the lists or her Polish underground contacts. At the last moment she was saved by the Polish Resistance who bribed a guard to secure her freedom. She bore the scars and disability of her torture the remainder of her life. ÂAfter the war, Irena attempted to find the parents of the children, to find they had all been gassed. The Communist government suppressed any recognition of the courageous anti-fascist partisans, most of whom were also anti-Communists. Irena’s story and those of other courageous Poles, were buried and forgotten. Her courage and resourcefulness were recognized by Israel in 1965 when she was awarded the Yad Vashem medal given to Righteous Gentiles who risked their own lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. In 1983 a tree was planted in her honor in  Israel. But in general, the world was silent about Irena Sendler. Silent until 1999, when three Kansas high school students uncovered Irena’s story, while looking for a National History Day project. Their teacher gave them a short paragraph about Irena Sendler from a 1994 U.S. News and World Report story entitled “The Other Schindlers†and they decided to research her life. They assumed Irena Sendler must be dead and searched for her burial site, but, to their surprise they discovered that she was still alive, 90-years-old and living with relatives in a small apartment in Warsaw. They created a play about her rescue efforts called "Life in a Jar", which has since been performed hundreds of times since in the U.S., Canada and Poland. In May 2001 they visited Irena in Warsaw. Irena passed away on May 12, 2008, at the age of 98. In 2007 Irena was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. She was not selected. Al Gore won --- for a slide show on Global Warming.
CBS recently aired a made-for-TV film of her activities during
the war: http://www.cbs.com/specials/courageous_heart/
That second unknown Catholic soldier is a friend of mine. Long
a soldier against the Left, this week he takes up the Cross of
the Holy Roman Church. Henceforward, he will be wearing the
white cloak and cross of the Christian soldier.
Deo Optimo Maximo
