There are a number of projects and programs which honor Chasiday Umos Haolam. One of the most recent and most unique projects which recognizes a Righteous Gentile has been turned into a performance, a website, a display and even a book.
The project is titled "Life in a Jar" and honors a Polish woman who not only saved over 2500 children during the Holocaust but took the time and effort to document these children's names and whereabouts so that they could be reunited with their families or, at the very least, with their community, after the war.
In 1939 Irena Sendler, a Polish social worker, joined the Zagota -- a Polish underground group devoted to helping Jews escape from the Nazis. In her role as a social worker she was allowed to enter the Warsaw ghetto where she quickly realized that the fate of the residents was death. Sendler identified orphans whom she could smuggle out of the ghetto and also persuaded parents to allow her to remove their children to safety.
Sendler, together with other Zagota members, transferred the children through clandestine means to the Polish part of Warsaw, sometimes through the Old Courthouse which was located on the edge of the ghetto and other times through sewer pipes under the streets, in ambulances, under seats in trams or even in toolboxes and other bags.
Once she had removed a child from the ghetto Sendler set about locating a hiding place for the child. She documented each child's name, family name and the place where the child was being taken on sheets of tissue paper which she put into jars and buried in her yard.
Sendler was captured by the Nazis in 1943 and interrogated under torture but she never revealed anything about the children's whereabouts. Zagota members bribed guards to release her and Sendler was forced into hiding until the end of the war.
The story of Irena Sendler was discovered, researched and archived by a group of Kansas high school students who have created a variety of programs through the Lowell Milken Center and funding of Jewish Philanthropist Lowell Milken to publicize the story.
The project is titled "Life in a Jar" and honors a Polish woman who not only saved over 2500 children during the Holocaust but took the time and effort to document these children's names and whereabouts so that they could be reunited with their families or, at the very least, with their community, after the war.
In 1939 Irena Sendler, a Polish social worker, joined the Zagota -- a Polish underground group devoted to helping Jews escape from the Nazis. In her role as a social worker she was allowed to enter the Warsaw ghetto where she quickly realized that the fate of the residents was death. Sendler identified orphans whom she could smuggle out of the ghetto and also persuaded parents to allow her to remove their children to safety.
Sendler, together with other Zagota members, transferred the children through clandestine means to the Polish part of Warsaw, sometimes through the Old Courthouse which was located on the edge of the ghetto and other times through sewer pipes under the streets, in ambulances, under seats in trams or even in toolboxes and other bags.
Once she had removed a child from the ghetto Sendler set about locating a hiding place for the child. She documented each child's name, family name and the place where the child was being taken on sheets of tissue paper which she put into jars and buried in her yard.
Sendler was captured by the Nazis in 1943 and interrogated under torture but she never revealed anything about the children's whereabouts. Zagota members bribed guards to release her and Sendler was forced into hiding until the end of the war.
The story of Irena Sendler was discovered, researched and archived by a group of Kansas high school students who have created a variety of programs through the Lowell Milken Center and funding of Jewish Philanthropist Lowell Milken to publicize the story.
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