farmdoc's blog post number 424

The word ‘hero’ is bandied around a fair bit these days. And I’m as guilty as anyone. I’ve mentioned it in 20 of the previous 423 Farmdoc’s Blog posts. Last 22 August I quoted a 3-part dictionary definition of ‘hero’. The first part’s ‘someone distinguished by exceptional courage and nobility and strength’. Today I write about two Holocaust heroes – one very well known, the other regrettably not. Irena Sendler (pictured), born in 1910, was a Polish Catholic social worker, and member of the Polish Underground in Warsaw in World War II. Having anticipated the plight of the Warsaw Ghetto Jews, she got permission to work in the Ghetto as a sanitary inspector. And she saved 2,500 Jewish children by smuggling them out of the Ghetto in boxes, suitcases and trolleys, their cries masked by the bark of her dog. Irena was eventually caught, and the Nazis tortured her and broke her arms and legs. She survived. In a glass jar buried under a tree in her backyard she’d kept the names of all the children she’d smuggled out. Most of them had been adopted or placed in foster homes. After the war she tried to locate any parents that may have survived it. Most had perished. Irena was nominated for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. (Al Gore won it.) She died in 2008. She was a true hero. Today’s other Holocaust hero? Anne Frank, whose 80th birthday was six days ago.