Some Real Superheroes

Kirsten, a 17 year old Danish girl in 1940 had a great talent. She would dress up as a clown and go to the hospital and perform for sick kids. She did this every Saturday until Mrs. Bergen the supervisor of a Jewish orphanage begged her to come there and do the same thing. There were 8 children who had been sent away from their parents to save their lives, and might not ever see their families again. So Kirsten gave her “Viking” puppet shows, painted their faces, and taught them how to make puppets, taught them silly rhymes and how to juggle. They loved her.

When the Gestapo plan to round up all the Jews in town and send them to concentration camps was leaked, they knew they had to get the children out of the orphanage. A local church offered to hide them until they could sneak them into Sweden. Because it was too dangerous to walk them from the orphanage to the church dressed in their regular clothes, Kirsten dressed them as clowns. When the German soldiers stopped them, Kirsten told them that they were going to put on a play. As scared as Kirsten was, she calmed the terror stricken children, and not only got them to the church, but stayed with them until they got the boat to Sweden.

She was 17.

Jean a 17 year old deaf French boy walked an American pilot, who had landed in a tree, down the street of his village pretending that the American was his friend and signing to him the entire way. His family hid the American, and when the neighbor turned him in to the Gestapo Jean and his family somehow got him to safety.

Jean was 17.

Adolfo Kiminsky was 18 when he operated a clandestine lab which made fake identity cards, passports, food ration cards, birth certificates and marriage licenses. Adolfo spent the World War II making fake passports for children and families who were going to be deported to concentration camps. He would get tips about who was going to be deported. One time he had not slept for two days, and when asked why he kept doing that work, he said “It is a simple calculation. In one hour I can make 30 bank documents; if I sleep for an hour, 30 people will die”.

Adolfo Kiminsky was 18 and it is estimated that he saved as many as 14,000 Jewish lives.

Jacques Lusseyran, a blind French boy at the age of 17 formed a Resistance group called the “Volunteers of Liberty. He organized a campaign to drop pro-resistance leaflets on trains. Jacques was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Buchenwald concentration camp and while he was there helped motivate the spirit of resistance within the camp.

He was 17.

Maria, a 17 year old girl in Greece, worked for the resistance. She volunteered to take food to the prison and get information from the prisoners. who sometimes heard the guards talking. She worked for EPON which was a female resistance group and without carrying weapons, took wounded people to hospitals, led protest marches, and brought food to the fighters.

She was 17.

Mordechai Anielewicz (Little Angel) was 24 when he became a freedom fighter in Warsaw, and fought to the end in the famous Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. About 400,000 Jews were pushed into a very small area, and the plan was to send them all to concentrations camps at 6,000 a day. The Germans planned to destroy the Ghetto in three days. The fight lasted four weeks, and Mordechai died in that ghetto fighting to the end. He was posthumously awarded the Cross of Valour by the Polish government, A Kibbutz was named for him in Israel. A Street on the site of a German concentration camp was named after him. Israel government issued a stamp honoring him, and famous actors have played him in movies.

He was 24 when he died in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Superheroes are a thing now. These kids were real life heroes and there are literally thousands of stories of kids who risked everything.

You don’t usually have to risk your life to be a hero. You just simply have to stand up and say “No” or “That’s not right” or “C’mon Dude” and feel like a superhero because you’ve done the right thing.

C’mon Dude.