She Saved Lives By Putting Their Names In a Bottle

An Article in the The Baltimore Sun told of a story I had never heard of before. It is about four teenagers in Uniontown, Kansas who took on a project for school. The teacher encouraged them to find out information on their topic. The story later on became a documentary on the life of Irena Sendler. Irena had helped to save 2,500 Jewish children during the Holocaust. They all lived in Poland, and Irena, a non-Jewish social worker, took it upon herself to transport these children from their Jewish homes and away from their parents into the safe keeping of others. They were given Christian names and papers and some of the churches took them in as orphans and other people took them in as foster children. Irena, with a group of about twenty or so associates, was able to save these children , because she encouraged their parents to let them go with her to safety. She falsified papers for them and they were safe at last. Many are alive today and credit Irena and the others in her group for their lives today. The Kansas students who researched all the information they could find on Irena went to Uniontown High School. The school's motto was “he who changes one person changes the entire world.” They proved this motto by informing the world of Irena who was mainly known in Poland for her life-saving events. Irena Sendler knew that no day could be lost. She had to help the Jewish children to live on even though their parents may perish in the Germans' hands. She did not think of herself or her safety and she and the others in her group set themselves up to take the children no matter what would happen to their own personal lives. She was nominated in 2007 for a Nobel Peace Prize and did not win it. Al Gore won it for his green ideas; everyone said Irena deserved it. She should have surely taken that prize, but the nomination itself was a tribute to a woman of deep valor. These four young teenagers chose to investigate and educate the public on the virtues and the story of Irena Sendler. They knew even in their young lives that if they could change one person and the entire world by telling this true and terrific story, it was a mitzvah (good deed). She took the names of the children and their parents and put them on a piece of paper which she put in a small bottle. She buried the bottles and when the war was over, she took the bottles from the ground and tried to find the parents if they had survived which many had not and matched them up with the surviving children. Hopefully they were reunited. The teens acted out the story they had written on Irena and they made it into a CD which I bought from the foundation that continues to tell this story. It is called Life In A Jar and it symbolizes the courage, the charity, the chutzpah, the caring, the cost to herself when she was caught doing this, the clearness of her conscience in stepping into these victims and small children’s lives and how she saved them. She lived to be about 90 and some of the students went to Poland where she lived and actually met her. She will be remembered by all the children she saved and if any of their parents survived, they met their children again due to her kindness and benevolent actions. She is a heroine, not some silly actress who goes on drugs, goes to rehab, comes out and repeats her actions. Irena is to be forever remembered as almost a saint in what she did. She blotted out anything about religion and performed her duties with love here on this earth to everyone. Brave is a word that does not give this situation enough meaning. She was more than brave, she was an angel on this earth and she should be revered for the rest of our lives as a gentle soul who could be strong and cunning in eliminating the Germans on her trail. She deserved the Nobel Peace Prize and when we were in Norway, we saw the room where it is usually given. If I ever went back there, I would silently put her name on the wall of winners. She not only was a winner of a person, she was a winner of life. She was an angel right on this earth and now she is in Heaven along with all the other angels. elita sohmer clayman