Celebrating 

A

SAINT

INDEED!

Irena Sendler
1910-2008

A 98 year-old German woman named Irena Sendler recently died. 

During WWII, Irena worked in the Warsaw Ghetto as a plumbing/sewer specialist. Irena smuggled Jewish children out; the infants in the bottom of the tool box she carried, and older children in a burlap sack she carried in the back of her truck. 

She also had a dog in the back of the truck that she trained to bark when the Nazi soldiers let her in and out of the ghetto. The soldiers wanted nothing to do with the dog, and the barking covered the children's and infants' sounds. 

Irena managed to smuggle out and to save 2500 children. She was eventually caught, and the Nazis broke both her legs, her arms and beat her severely. 

Irena kept record of the names of all the children she had smuggled out, and kept them in a glass jar buried under a tree in her backyard. 

After the war, she tried to locate any parents who may have survived, and was able to reunite some of the families. Most, however,  had been killed. She further helped those children to be placed into foster family homes or to be adopted.

Last year Irena was up for the Nobel Peace Prize, but  she was not selected. Al Gore won - for a slide show on Global Warming.

                                           A saint flies home...