I’ve got a confession to make.
You know when you sent me that email chain letter that said we would all have bad luck if I didn’t forward it on? Well, I deleted it. And that one where if I didn’t send it on to my seven dearest friends, they would never know how much I cared? Deleted. That internet meme that I you sent with best intentions? Sorry, deleted. Even that chain letter full of stickers for your kids’ friends? Yes, I’m the bad guy who broke the chain.
I just can’t do them. I don’t know what it is … it could be that it’s the sniff of guilt attached to them, or perhaps the thought of dropping another item on to someone else’s to-do list. Or maybe I’m just a party pooper. (That’s a good possibility, actually.)
In any case, I received a chain email letter this morning from my step father-in-law. It was about a woman named Irena Sendler. And it warmed the heart of even this, the grouchiest of chain-letter party poopers, enough that I am going to share it with you.
So, without further ado, here it is:
The prize doesn’t always go to the most deserving!!!
There recently was a death of a 98 year-old lady named Irena Sendler. During WWII, Irena, got permission to work in the WarsawGhetto, as a Plumbing/Sewer specialist. She had an ‘ulterior motive’ … She KNEW what the Nazi’s plans were for the Jews, (being German.) Irena smuggled infants out in the bottom of the tool box she carried and she carried in the back of her truck a burlap sack, (for larger kids.) She also had a dog in the back 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 kids/infants noises.. During her time of doing this, she managed to smuggle out and save 2500 kids/infants. She was caught, and the Nazi’s broke both her legs, arms and beat her severely. Irena kept a record of the names of all the kids she smuggled out 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 it and reunited the family. Most had been gassed. Those kids she helped got placed into foster family homes or adopted.
Last year Irena was up for the Nobel Peace Prize …. She was not selected. Al Gore won, for a slide show on Global Warming.
It is now more than 60 years after the Second World War in Europe ended. This e-mail is being sent as a memorial chain, in memory of the six million Jews, 20 million Russians, 10 million Christians and 1,900 Catholic priests who were murdered, massacred, raped, burned, starved and humiliated!
You can read more about Irena Sendler on Wikipedia, a site titled Holocaust: Crimes, Heros and Villains, and Life in a Jar: The Irena Sendler Project. Reading more about her, it is impossible not to be touched by her strength and courage. And yet, she was such a humble person. Before her death, she was honoured at a ceremony in 2007. She was too frail to attend, but she sent a letter. This passage, quoted in the United Kingdom’s newspaper the Telegraph, stuck me most:
“Every child saved with my help is the justification of my existence on this Earth, and not a title to glory.” — Irena Sendler
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