To Repair The World
It is, after all, a broken place. This earth we inhabit is a precious, living orb, one that has cradled us and the other inhabitants of its life-rich environment for far longer than memory and history enlightens us with information about our formation as entities dependent upon nature's bounty. We struggle with the knowledge that we have been responsible for much in this world that is wrong, unjust and horribly troubling through our mismanagement of what nature has so generously allowed us to trifle with.Worse, in a very profound way, is the manner in which we have betrayed our integral humanity. The inhumane, but yet very human way in which we approach our dominion over the natural world through the manipulation of our natural resources only now startles us into acknowledgment of responsibility as nature reveals the damage we have done, redounding back upon ourselves through environmental disasters. Yet the manner in which we have set about diminishing the equal status of our fellow humans the better to destroy them, shames us beyond redemption.
As a conscious collective of reasoning and responsible humans we offer ourselves as abject failures. In the aggregate we are notionally representative of responsible humans reacting to our environment so jealously that we take the position that denying equality and the right to exist to others is our right and privilege. We hark back to our primitive, tribal beginnings, when to prevail against adversity led to hostile reactions toward outsiders contending for scarce resources.
We still appear unwilling to lift ourselves out of that primitive experience, the survival instinct to enable our own continued existence to the detriment of others'. And we continue to marginalize and victimize those who appear culturally, ethnically unlike ourselves. We the superior, they the inferior manifestations of humankind. Still, there are those among us whose courage, and clear vision of justice remind us from time to time that they exemplify those attributes we should all aspire toward.
One such is a Polish woman born in 1910 in a small village close to Warsaw. Irena Sendler became a social worker and during the Second World War, when Poland was under Nazi occupation, she joined Zegota, an underground network of Poles who resisted the Nazis, and did so by providing funds and places of refuge for Jews at that critical time in history that saw the world's Jewish population hounded, imprisoned, tortured and slaughtered by the millions. A reality an aghast world still cannot quite believe; the annihilation of millions simply because they were Jews.
Irena Sendler, as head of the secret network's children's division was singly responsible through her commitment to honouring life and her love of humankind - working alongside other determined volunteers - of salvaging the lives of two thousand, five hundred Jewish children. Hers was a network comprised of a mere 25 collaborators, yet they managed collectively to rescue infants and young children, with their parents' desperate consent, from the Warsaw ghetto.
The children were smuggled out in boxes and wooden crates. Some were brought out through a combined courthouse/church having exists within and without the ghetto, leading outside its walls. Some were placed on a tram, with the knowledge of a trusted driver. Met outside the walls and swiftly taken to places of refuge, forged identity papers provided. What's more, unlike many who aided in securing the safety of Jewish children in that Catholic country, where many were brought up as Catholics, Irena Sendler was determined to preserve their identities.
Carefully inscribing personal information about each child; revealing authentic names, parents' names and place of birth, the data were preserved in glass jars and buried in a collaborator's garden. When she was arrested in 1943, Irena Sendler was interrogated, tortured and sentenced to be executed. Although her name was placed on a list of executed prisoners she had miraculously managed to bribe someone on the prison staff to assist in her escape.
Ms. Sendler has lived out her life in Poland. She is now 97 years of age. She must have felt that there was nothing extraordinary about her war-time activities and her experiences, for she kept them fairly well to herself. Her life-saving enterprise was not generally known, and there was no official recognition of her bravery and self-appointed dedication to her task. Until four children in a class of young children in Kansas approached their teacher during National History Day informing him they were interested in learning more about the Holocaust.
The teacher, Norm Conard, handed them a magazine clipping that made mention of Irena Sendler; the story that she had saved the lives of 2,500 Jewish children compelled them to try to uncover additional details. When the children searched out information on Ms. Sendler's grave site, they were amazed to discover she was still living and in 2000 they mailed Ms. Sendler a script for a play they had written, "Life in a Jar", to commemorate her heroism.
A year later the children met the focus of their study when they travelled to Poland. The story of their search, leading to publicity surrounding the play and the existence and history of Irena Sendler's compassionate work in saving doomed children finally led to public recognition of the part she had played in resisting the Final Solution. Poland's president and the prime minister of Israel have jointly nominated her for a Nobel Peace Prize.
A documentary is in the process of being produced. In her letters to the children who sought to know her and to celebrate her courage, Ms. Sendler describes why it was she risked her life for Jewish children: "My parents taught me that if someone is drowning one always needs to rescue them." And since, through the duration of the war, Jews were most in need of rescue that was where she turned her attention: "For that reason, helping those who were most oppressed was the need of my heart."
For their part, the children believe that in performing "Life in a Jar", they are encouraging others to embrace the goodness that Irena Sendler's efforts represented. Their teacher, now retired, was also inspired by this experience; now working along with his former students at the Lowell Milken Center, a non-profit group whose purpose it is to instill in other students the desire to become involved in projects to promote respect and understanding.
The goal of the foundation is to be found on their website: "To repair the world."
Labels: Anti-Semitism, Heroes and Villains, Justice
posted by Pieface @ Monday, December 03, 2007
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