Have you heard the story of Irena Sendler from World War II?
When Hitler took over Irena’s beloved Poland, he set up ghetto camps where Jewish families lived before being crammed into cattle cars and hauled off to concentration camps where most died.
But Irena Sendler’s heart was touched by the plight of the Jewish people, especially their young children. She knocked on Jewish doors in the Warsaw ghetto and, in Sendler's own words, "tried to talk the mothers out of their children." Irena offered an escape from near certain death, offering to take the little ones to Roman Catholic convents, orphanages and homes where they would be given non-Jewish aliases. Imagine the parents’ agony.
The children that were released to Irena’s care now had to be carefully removed from the guarded Ghettos. Some were stolen out in boxes, suitcases, sacks and coffins. Babies were sedated to quiet their cries, some of them transported in the bottom of a tool box. Irena carefully wrote down the real names of every child taken—in hopes of reuniting them with family members after the war. The names were placed in jars that she buried in a garden.
Ultimately, Irena was caught and tortured by the Nazis who broke both her feet and legs. In the end, though, she saved nearly 3000 Polish Jews.
What is lesser known is that Irena’s father was a physician many years before World War II, at a time when the deadly disease, typhus, was a major problem in Poland. Fearful of catching the sickness, many doctors refused to treat patients in a region which happened to have a large number of Jews living there. Not Irena’s father. He faithfully, courageously treated everyone…and died from Typhus in1917.
In profound thanks, Jewish community leaders approached Irena’s mother with financial assistance for Irena’s education. It was a gesture that Irena never forgot…and a kindness she returned, trip after dangerous trip into the Jewish Ghetto.
Proverbs 24:11 “Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter.”
That’s Irena’s story. What’s yours?