“It gives me hope” - The
remarkable story of Irena
Sendler
By LAWRENCE HAAS
Have you ever heard of Irena
Sendler?
During the Holocaust, this
Catholic social worker saved
2,500 Jewish children from
certain death by convincing
their parents, who were trapped
in the Warsaw ghetto, to let her
smuggle their kids to gentile
families on the outside.
She risked her life every day
for months, sneaking the kids
out of the ghetto by, for
instance, hiding them in
ambulances and trucks. She was
finally caught and tortured by
the Nazis, escaping the firing
squad only because her
colleagues on the outside paid
an extraordinary bribe to let
her flee at the last minute.
Now, here’s the kicker:
If you’ve heard of Sendler,
it’s likely because of an
extraordinary high school
history teacher – Norm Conard –
in a small town in southeastern
Kansas and three of his students
who worked on a project about
her for National History Day in
2000.
Sendler’s story, the
students’ story, and the link
between the two are told in an
inspiring book, Life in a Jar,
that I read only because my
wife’s friend recommended it to
her and she passed it on to me.
I’m grateful that she did.
The story begins at Uniontown
High School in late 1999 when
Liz Cambers, 14, was thumbing
through a file of news clips to
find an idea for the National
History Day project when she
noticed a U.S. News and World
Report article from
1994, “The Other Schindlers,”
that summarized Sendler’s story
in a few paragraphs. Intrigued,
she chose Sendler for the
project and found two other
students – one 14, one 16 – to
help.
For months, they researched
Sendler’s story relentlessly,
spending hours on the phone and
in libraries across Kansas and
creating a play that they called
“Life in a Jar.” That’s because
Sendler, who wanted to make sure
the children’s Jewish names were
not lost to history, wrote them
on slips of paper and, with each
rescue, inserted the paper into
a jar that she buried near an
apple tree.
After a dress rehearsal of
the play in the high school gym
that brought its audience to its
feet, they won first prize at
the district competition in
Columbus, KS. Then, while
revising and rehearsing the play
in early 2000 as they prepared
for the state competition –
which they also won – they
learned from the Jewish
Foundation for the Righteous in
New York that Sendler was alive;
she was 90 and lived in Warsaw.
They wrote to her, and she
wrote back (in Polish) –
beginning her letter with the
words, “My dear and beloved
girls, very close to my heart.”
From her letter, the students
learned that the Holocaust
memorial Yad Vashem named
Sendler a “Righteous Among the
Nations” in 1965; a tree was
planted in her name in Israel in
1983; and Israel made her an
honorary citizen in 1985. None
of that brought her much
notoriety back home, however. It
was the three students – all
Protestants, by the way – who
would do that.
They didn’t win the National
History Day competition in
Washington, but by now the play
was much bigger than a history
project. They performed it for
Holocaust survivors at the
Jewish Foundation for the
Righteous and for synagogues,
churches, schools, and civic
clubs across the Midwest.
Newspapers began to write about
the students and their play, and
they soon recruited a manager to
handle their travels.
As audiences stood to
applaud, many of them weeping,
Conard would ask audience
members what had moved them to
such emotion. One said,
“Protestant girls from rural
Kansas, rescuing the story of a
Catholic social worker from
Poland who rescued Jewish
children from the Nazis. It
gives me hope.”
One night, a businessman who
saw the play invited the girls
to dinner, learned that they
were trying to raise money to
visit Sendler, and, two days
later, called to tell them that
he had raised the money for
them.
Arriving for what would be
the first of several trips to
Poland, the girls became
celebrities in this foreign
land, appearing on CNN and
Polish and European TV; sitting
for interviews with
international and Polish
newspapers; visiting Auschwitz,
Treblinka, the former ghetto,
and other historic sites; and
performing the play for
Holocaust survivors, rescuers,
and others. On this trip and
later ones, they had several
moving visits with Sendler
before she died in 2008 at the
age of 98.
What, in the end, had these
girls and their inspiring
teacher accomplished?
Consider this: When they
began their research, they could
find just one internet reference
to Sendler, from Yad Vashem.
Since then, according to the
March 2011 edition of the book
Life in a Jar:
• The website
www.irenasendler.org
has received 25 million hits;
• Sendler has been honored by
numerous major organizations
across the world;
• Poland’s President bestowed
the nation’s highest honor, The
Order of the White Eagle, on her
in 2002;
• Israel’s Prime Minister and
Poland’s President nominated her
for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2007;
• The Hallmark Hall of Fame
produced a 2009 film, “The
Courageous Heart of Irena
Sender,” that was shown across
the United States on CBS; and
• The National Bank of Poland
minted a coin in late 2009 with
images of Sendler and two other
brave women with whom she worked
during the Holocaust.
“History is not history,” the
chancellor of Purdue
University-Calumet, Howard
Cohen, said at one showing of
the play, “until it is written
or told."
Three high school girls in a
remote part of Kansas told
history and, in so doing, made
history as well.
Lawrence J. Haas was
Communications Director and
Press Secretary for Vice
President Al Gore. He writes
widely about foreign and
domestic affairs.
