Irena

In May, 2008 a 98 year-old lady named Irena Sendler died. Sendler was a Catholic social worker during the 1940s that saw the handwriting on the wall for the Jews of Poland. During WWII, Irena, got permission to work in the Warsaw ghetto as a Plumbing/Sewer specialist. She had an 'ulterior motive'. She KNEW what the Nazi's plans were for the Jews (being German).

She became concerned for the children in the Warsaw Ghetto, which was one of the largest ghettos of Jews established by the Nazis. The population of the Warsaw Ghetto dropped from 450,000 to about 70,000 people because of starvation, sickness, and tens of thousands of Jews deported to concentration camps and death.

Sendler convinced Jewish parents that their children were facing death either in the Ghetto or in concentration camps and offered to rescue them. She smuggled the children out of the Warsaw Ghetto and hid them in the homes of Poles who adopted them or in orphanages or convents. She made lists of the children's names and family connections and hid them in jars in her garden so that someday she could find the children and tell them who they were.

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, plus the barking covered the kids/infants noises.

During her time of doing this, she managed to smuggle out and save 2,500 kids/infants.

She was caught, and the Nazi's broke both her legs, arms and beat her severely.

Irena had 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.

President Obama won one year before becoming President for his work as a community organizer for ACORN and Al Gore won also --- for a slide show on Global Warming.

The prize doesn't always go to the most deserving.

(Author Unknown)

“Pure gold put in the fire comes out of it proved pure; genuine faith put through this suffering comes out proved genuine. When Jesus wraps this all up, it's your faith, not your gold, that God will have on display as evidence of his victory.”

I Peter 1:7 (MSG)