Three Women -Three Saved Lives

Reported by Irena Bellert, President of the Foundation

On October 24, 2002, the Polish-Jewish Heritage Foundation of Canada invited three Holocaust survivors from three continents: Elisabeth Ficowska, President of the Association of Holocaust Children from Warsaw, Elisabeth Zielinska-Mundlak from Caracas, and Renata Skotnicka-Zajdman from Montreal. We asked the Polish Institute of Arts and Science to co-sponsor our event and invite their members. Dr Witold Spirydowicz, Consul General of the Polish Republic in Montreal, was asked to let us organize this event under his auspices in the consulate.

The objective of the encounter was to honor Irena Sendler. She is the living symbol of all those to whom that evening was dedicated - the members of ZEGOTA, the clandestine Council for Aid to Jews in Poland, 1942-1945, and all the people of good will who helped save their Jewish neighbors by risking their own lives and the lives of their families. It is the example of such lives that enables us all to be proud to belong to the human race.

If we feel such pride - and I know that many people do - despite the fact that we were not personally engaged in such heroism, it is because we have the right to feel ennobled by the fact that such fellow human beings did exist, and in particular we feel happy that among those were our compatriots or neighbors. However, it directly follows from the above that many of us also feel shame - despite the fact that we did not do it personally - that at the same time there were people who did the opposite: who denounced Jews, robbed and plundered their property, and - provoked by German Nazis or due to other despicable motives - murdered innocent people. And some of those people, too, were our compatriots or neighbors.

During our meeting the audience learned about Irena Sendler's story. As an employee of the Social Welfare Department of the City of Warsaw before the war, she continued her work during the Nazi occupation aiding persecuted Jews. When the ghetto was created, about 90 per cent of the three thousand Jews in the care of her department found themselves behind the walls of the ghetto. When ZEGOTA was set up in 1942, Irena Sendler continued her humanitarian activity in collaboration with this organization. Being in charge of the Children's Aid Section of ZEGOTA she had more opportunities to get financial support for aiding the Jews, smuggling and rescuing Jewish children from death and placing them with Polish families or in groups in various homes, orphanages, monasteries or educational institutions. Irena Sendler's story is certified by a document issued by the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw which says: "In her unselfish and humanitarian activity of aiding the persecuted Jews and rescuing Jewish children from death, Irena Sendler constantly risked her own life and the lives of her next of kin (….). The Jewish Historical Institute affirms that Irena Sendler was one of the most dedicated and active workers in aiding the Jews under the Nazi occupation" (see, for more details, Wladyslaw Bartoszewski and Zofia Lewin, "The Samaritans - Heroes of the Holocaust", Chapter 2, Irena Sendler, pp 72-89, Twayne Publishers, New York,1970.)

As the Head of the Children's Aid Section of ZEGOTA, Irena Sendler managed to save around 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto - many more than the people on the world-famous Schindler's List - keeping their names buried in a jar (see, Teresa Prekerowa, Konspiracyjna Rada Pomocy Zydom w Warszawie 1942-1945, PIW, 1982, pp 215-217). In 1965 Irena Sendleer was recognized by Yad Vashem as the Righteous Among the Nations of the World.

We have also been told how teenaged students of a high school in Uniontown in Kansas found the remarkable story of Irena Sendler, while searching for a hero in books and documents, and how they made her famous through their theatrical play that was awarded first prize at an interschool competition in Kansas.

Among the children saved by Irena Sendler from the Warsaw Ghetto were Elisabeth Ficowska and Renata Skotnicka-Zajdman. During the meeting each of the three women told us about her tragedies and luck, about the extraordinary people who had risked their own lives and the lives of their families in helping them to survive. We saw fragments of a video about Irena Sendler and the play created by the Kansas students. (For more details see the articles placed on our Web site in NEW PUBLICATIONS in September 2002 under the title 'Irena Sendler and the Sendler Project' and in October 2002 under the title 'It is my Turn'). We also saw an excellent video, "I was Lucky", produced by Elisabeth Mundlak about the story of her life and the Jews of Czestochowa.

A remarkable fact in Irena Sendler's story is that three teenaged students Elizabeth Cambers, Megan Stewart and Sabrina Coons, with their teacher, Norman Conard, in a small Kansas town named Uniontown, started a school project which did so much by spreading Irena Sendler's heroic past on this continent. Her story had already been confirmed by Yad Vashem and told in several publications (e.g. in books by Wladyslaw Bartoszewski with Zofia Levin and Teresa Prekerowa); however, it remained little known in North America. The students started with a modest play about her life and ended with the IRENA SENDLER PROJECT which is now having an enormous impact on many people - especially youngsters of school age in the US.

On October 22, 2002, I learned from the "News of the Day", published by the IRENA SENDLER PROJECT, that in addition to all their numerous former projects, the students continue with several more projects on tolerance and accepting diversity. These projects are designed to bring a new awareness of race and culture by the use of creative media and drama. The students' objective is to extend the boundaries of the classroom and touch many lives.

I wish to state at the end of this report that this is exactly what I believe any such project should be aware of and aspire to. From my own experience in the past, as a political prisoner for almost eight years (during the German occupation of Poland, 1941-1942 and in the Stalinist period, 1948-1955), in my work for the Polish-Jewish Heritage Foundation and from what I learned about the impact of the IRENA SENDLER PROJECT on so many young people, I am convinced of the following. Whatever any single project can do towards a better understanding and relations among different cultures, religions or nationalities may seem to be no more than a drop of water in the ocean. If one example, however, can inspire the development of similar projects in other places around the world, such projects or organizations - no matter how small - are in fact more than important. There is an obvious necessity to follow such objectives, rather than wait for a war that could lead to the total destruction of our planet. Any one of such and similar projects on our globe that has some impact on the surrounding trend of opinion and behavior for the sake of mutual understanding, or at least tolerance, toward those who are different from us, contributes in a significant way to peace

Irena Bellert is the president of the Foundation
and the Web editor of www.polish-jewish-heritage.org