A REAL Hero - Page 1

Remember this lady?





Irena Sendler

Died: May 12, 2008 (aged 98)

Warsaw, Poland






During WWII, Irena, got permission to work in the Warsaw ghetto, as a Plumbing/Sewer specialist.


She had an ulterior motive.



Irena smuggled Jewish infants out in the bottom of the tool box she carried.


She also carried a burlap sack in the back of her truck, for larger kids.



Irena kept 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.



Ultimately, she was caught, however, and the Nazi's broke both of her legs and arms and beat her severely.



Irena kept a record of the names of all the kids she had smuggled out,


In a glass jar that she buried under a tree in her back yard.


After the war, she tried to locate any parents that may have survived and tried to reunite the family.


Most had been gassed. Those kids she helped got placed into foster family homes or adopted.



In 2007 Irena was up for the Nobel Peace Prize. She was not selected.


Al Gore won, for a slide show on Global Warming. 



Later another politician, Barack Obama, won for his work as a community organizer for ACORN.

You're right, Ninja--this woman DID embody the very definition of the word, 'hero'.

But Al Gore didn't win the Nobel Peace Prize for 'a slide show', and he didn't win it by himself.  It was awarded jointly to him AND The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. So that's wrong.

And I'm really puzzled as to how Obama's nomination and award in 2009 relate to Irena Sendler not being awarded the 2007 NPP...do tell!

Then I noticed that the Nobel Prize website that the names of the nominees who aren't selected are kept secret for 50 years after their nomination...so I wondered how anyone knew Irena Sendler was nominated and passed over for the 2007 NPP.

So I did some more checking, and I'm glad I did.

Turns out that the story of Irena Sendler's courage, as relayed above, somewhat true--and incomplete, as it turns out; see: The Irena Sendler Project. 

But the reports of her being passed over for the 2007 NPP?  Not so much. According to the Irena Sandler Project's  website:

"*Irena was not German as is being mentioned on so many incorrect web sites. As you can read above, she was Polish. FYI-our web site is based on hundreds of interviews with primary sources and a dozen interviews with Irena, plus over fifty letters from Irena and 4,000 pages of total research. Much gratitude is given to two of the children for information, Renata Zajdman and Elzbieta Ficowska. Be careful with some web sites and their incorrect information.

***SNOPES.COM has much incorrect information. She was not German, She didn't know the Nazi's plans, She was not a plumbing specialist (she was a social worker), Most of the children saved were not babies, She used a tool box several times at most,The truck wasn't hers, Her legs were fractured-not broken, Her arms were not broken, The dog was only used a few times, Her name was Irena not Iliana and there are several other mistakes. The Nobel Peace Prize is given for acheivement during the past several years, Irena knew this and asked not to be nominated. The Nobel Committee encouraged her nomination to give her more recognition. She was a big fan of Al Gore. Finally, snopes.com has ignored all manner of communication to correct these and other incorrect statements. "

So, yes, Irena Sendler WAS a hero, and she deserved more recognition for what she did than she received...but she didn't leave this world unappreciated or unknown, and if nothing else, I guess I should thank you for attempting to perpetuate a completely-unrelated political statement that incorrectly uses her story to make a jab at Al Gore, President Obama, and climate change research.  If you hadn't done so, I wouldn't have learned about this amazing woman, and I'm glad I now do know her story. 

The TRUE version, not the one that was altered by some uber-conservative asshat for their own purposes. Adds to my pride in the second-generation Polish genetics that are part of my DNA.


Edited to add: Oh, and this REALLY should've been posted in the Off-Topic forum, not the All-Breed forum. But I guess you were going for maximum exposure, eh?

Thanks for putting in the time to research that, Hexe.  Very interesting.
Guess you got BUSTED, Ninja.

Real heroes:
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/15/15927932-lives-saved-by-teachers-custodian-and-even-children-in-connecticut-school-shooting?lite

Never mind............Hexe has said all that needs to be said.

Dear Critiquers, MERRY CHRISTMAS, glad to see you're in the Holiday Spirit. 

That was sent to me in an email, I simply cut and pasted it. The part about the Nobel Peace Prize was part of the email.

I meant to post it on off topic, my mistake. But since her DOG was distracting the German Guards and allowing her to be a HERO, IMO it was Dog related, so IMO it could have gone on either side.

I've receive emails too that were not 100% true and copied them without making sure they were factual. I had to ask to be taken off 2 mass mailing lists because the OP's were taking everything out of context and wordshopping to make people they didn't like look bad. Half truths are as damaging as blatant lies and can be harder to recognize without doing some fact checking.

Blitzen,

That was sent from one of my wife's Canadian girl friends. LOL

I'll be quiet, don't want to cause an International scene.

Ninja, if you didn't post it to be a muckraker, then I apologize for directing my harshness your way--though you really SHOULD fact-check things like this before you pass them along. Had your wife's friend done so before forwarding it to her, perhaps your post would have just been about an amazing woman named Irena Sendler, and I'd have just replied with thanks for sharing her story...because it IS an inspiring one, and well worth retelling.

In this instance, however, I do give have to concede that the source that most people use to fact-check this sort of thing, Snopes, doesn't have the correct info published on their site, either.  Were it not for the Nobel nomination part, I might have accepted Snopes' verification, but the 50 year secrecy policy of the Nobel organization made that part ring false enough to make me dig further and confirm that the nomination issue was not accurate.  I do hope Snopes makes the corrections to their entry for this, because it would be disappointing to find that they, too, aren't really about getting the truth out there, as is the case with so many other sites on the web.

So happy holidays to you and yours, and I'll take your word that you were posting it for the courage of the woman at the center of the story than for the political virus that  composition carries within.

Pax.