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What
Does the Lord Require?
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Micah
6:8
“He
has showed you, O man, what is good. And What does the Lord require
of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with
your God.”
This
verse sounds so simple, yet we are tested on this point in many
areas of our lives. Such was the case for Irena Sendler, a Polish
woman that worked for the Poland ’s Department of Welfare and
used her position to help the Jews of her nation during World
War II.
In
1940, Hitler’s Nazi regime built the Warsaw Ghetto, a 16 block
area in the city of Warsaw , Poland , and proceeded to herd over
500,000 Polish Jews behind its wall to await annihilation. Irena
was appalled. While many non-Jewish Poles turned their backs,
Irena Sendler refused to look the other way. She was so horrified
by the conditions of the Ghetto that she joined the Council for
Aid to Jews, Zegota , organized by the Polish underground
resistance movement, and directed the efforts to rescue Jewish
children. At that time nearly 5,000 people were dying a month
from starvation and diseases. Though her name is not recognized
by most, Irena in an unsung heroine who defied the Nazis and saved
2,500 Jewish children from certain death by smuggling them out
of the Warsaw Ghetto.
Born
in 1910 as Irena Krzyzanowski, she grew up in Otwock, a town about
15 miles southeast of Warsaw . Irena was greatly influenced by
her father, Stanislaw, who was one of the first Polish Socialists.
His ideas were a great influence on her as she studied Polish
literature and was part of the leftist Union of Democratic Youth.
Irena’s heart for the Jewish people of her nation may have been
acquired by watching her father, a medical doctor, take care his
patients, many of which were of poor Jews.
Only
Irena knew the children’s true identities and kept record of them,
and their new identities, in coded form. She placed this information
in glass jars and buried the jars beneath an apple tree in a neighbor’s
back yard, across the street from German barracks. She hoped to
one day dig up the jars, locate the children and inform them of
their past.
Between
1942 and 1943, Irena successfully smuggled out over 400 children,
but on October 20, 1942 she was arrested for her activities and
imprisoned by the Gestapo. She was the only one who knew the names
and addresses of the families sheltering the Jewish children and
she endured torture to conceal this information. Under unrelenting
torment, Irena remained strong…and silent. Though the Nazis could
break her body (they broke both her feet and legs) they could
not break her spirit. Irena refused to betray any of her associates
or the children in hiding. She spent three months in the Pawiak
prison and was sentenced to death.
While
she awaited execution, her Zegota associates were able
to bribe one of the German guards to halt the execution. This
German soldier took Irena to an “additional interrogation” and
once outside he shouted in Polish “Run!”…and she did. The next
day she saw her name on the list of the executed Poles.
Even
though she faced death because of her work in rescuing Jewish
children, Irena did not give up this cause after her narrow escape.
Instead, she returned to the Warsaw Ghetto under a false identity
and continued the work of rescuing Jewish children until the end
of the war.
When
the war ended, Irena dug up the jars and used the notes in them
to track down the 2,500 children she placed with adoptive families
in hopes of reuniting them with relatives scattered across Europe
. However, she found that most of the children had lost their
families to Nazi concentration camps.
The
children only knew Irena by her code name Jolanta, but many never
forgot her. Years later she received an award for her humanitarian
service during the war and her pictured appeared in the newspaper.
When the paper hit the newsstands, she received telephone calls
from many of the children, now grown, who recognized her as the
woman who took them out of the Ghetto.
Still
having a heart for people, later in life Irena continued her work
with Social Welfare helping others by working to create houses
for elderly people, orphanages, and emergency service for children.
Irena
Sendler never considered herself a hero and never claimed any
credit for her work on behalf of the Jewish people during World
War II. In fact, her one regret was that she wasn’t able to do
more and she felt that this regret would follow her the rest of
her life.
Irena
knew what was good and what the Lord required of her. She acted
justly, and loved mercy, and walked humbly with her God. Do we
do the same?
To
my knowledge, Irena is living today in Warsaw , Poland , as is
94 years old.
To
read more about Irena Sendler visit: http://www.historyswomen.com/IrenaSendler.html