Savior of at least 2500 Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto, Irena Sendler passed away on Monday May 12th, 2008 at 8:00 am CEST in Warsaw, Poland. To learn about this amazing woman I recommend the website dedicated to telling the world about her efforts to save Jewish children. I recently saw a play about her efforts during the war. “Life in a Jar” which underscores the amazing altruistic nature of this woman. Films, books, and tributes to her life have been written or are in production. The NYT writes:

Irena Sendler, a Roman Catholic who created a network of rescuers in Poland who smuggled about 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw ghetto in World War II, some of them in coffins, died Monday in Warsaw. She was 98.

Mrs. Sendler was head of the children’s bureau of Zegota, an underground organization set up to save Jews after the Nazis invaded Poland on Sept. 1, 1939. Soon after the invasion, approximately 450,000 Jews, about 30 percent of Warsaw’s population, were crammed into a tiny section of the city and barricaded behind seven-foot-high walls.

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Rabbi Yonah

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