Irena Sendler Quotes

You see a man drowning, you must try to save him even if you cannot swim.

Fear makes you weak; anger makes you strong.

Irena Sendler never thought of herself as a hero. She only did what she felt she must, and wished she could have done more.

I was taught by my father that when someone is drowning you don't ask if they can swim, you just jump in and help.

Every child saved with my help is the justification of my existence on this Earth, and not a title to glory.

We all have to ask ourselves, "What would I have done?". I agree with Wladyslaw Bartofszewski, one of the organizers of ZEGOTA, who said, "Only the dead have done enough.

To save one Jewish child, ten Poles and two Jews had to risk death. To betray that same child and the family that hid him required only one informer or, worse still, one blackmailer. The risk of being caught by the SS was not prison, but death- death for the entire family.

Every time you walk into church, the first thing you see is a man on a cross. He died to save us-not to give us everything we want-to save us. That's what's so hard to understand. It's not about him answering your prayers-it's about you being like him not matter what happens on this Earth. 'Thy will be done.' There will always be sadness and pain.

Irena Sendler (code name "Jolanta") described it. A Christian doctor's daughter with many Jewish friends, she reconfigured her job at the Social Welfare Department, recruited ten like-minded others, and began issuing false documents with forged signatures.

I do not consider myself a hero. The true heroes were the mothers and fathers who gave me their children. I only did what my heart commanded. A hero is someone doing extraordinary things. What I did was not extraordinary. It was a normal thing to do. I was just being decent.

there is no complete written Polish history of the Warsaw ghetto. Think about what this means. How could something so important in a nation’s history be ignored? It is not forgotten. Every Pole knows. It is ignored.

The Chief Rabbi of Poland, American-born Michael Schudrich, greeted Mr. C. and the students. “You know,” the rabbi said to them. “This moment is the ultimate revenge on Hitler. Protestant kids, celebrating a Catholic rescuer of Jewish children from the Warsaw ghetto, performing in a Jewish theater in Warsaw. And they are being filmed by German television.” * * * * * * * * * * Before

but she could let her know that she understood, that she was sorry, that she knew what it felt like to worry about your Mom. One thing Liz could do uniquely and with pride was play her saxophone. Liz had been thinking about a musical accompaniment for Life in a Jar and had come upon the perfect song – Eugene Bozza’s Aria, a saxophone solo in a minor key that gave dignity to suffering. After all was said and done, after all the raging, all the sorrow, all the counseling, the one thing Liz wanted for Megan, for herself – maybe what everyone wanted and needed – was dignity in their suffering. To

Young Irena: Yes, I will always remember that, and I will also remember what you say about people all being the same, regardless of race or religion. I will not forget your words – ever.

There was Irena, less than five feet tall, standing behind her chrome walker, smiling, her coal-dark eyes surprised. She wore a black dress and a black headband across her pure white hair. Irena’s smile turned puckish, the tip of her tongue flicking across her lips. Liz began to clap, then Megan and Sabrina, right behind her, and like pond ripples their applause spread into the living room. Was it for Irena? For the Kansas girls? For the moment? Irena motioned with one hand – come to me. And they did so, cautiously, for Megan thought her frail as crystal. Irena looped her arm around Megan and pulled her cheek down to her own. Liz and Sabrina stood by Irena’s walker, Liz’s hand covering her mouth, shocked to be there. Tears streaked Megan’s cheeks. Abruptly, the applause stopped, as if only silence was suitable for this moment.

Irena greeted each one and again asked, “Do you have any burning questions?” Sabrina said, “I still don’t understand why your heroism wasn’t better known.” Megan said, “Everybody we tell your story to asks why they don’t know you. It’s not fair.” “Yes, my dear girls, the world is not fair. It is for you to make it more fair. People like me, people with the Yad Vashem medal – I think many wish I would just quietly die without reminding them of our dark history. A life is full of wonderful things and terrible things. Still, I try to remember the good, but sometimes it’s too difficult – too painful.

Irena toasted “Professor Norman and my dearly beloved girls.” Mr. C. responded with his own accolade. “Our deep thanks go to Irena,” he said. “Compared to what you and the Jewish and Polish people lived through, our difficulties are trivial. Compared to your courage, we are, all of us, only children. But you are our hero – our role model. We will carry on your mission – your deep commitment to respect for all people. I want to offer a toast in Hebrew – one we all know well – an aspiration to which you, Irena have contributed so much. L’Chaim – To Life.” Even the documentary cameraman put down his video-cam and picked up a glass. “L’Chaim – To Life.

Less than one percent. That’s how many we saved. But the arithmetic, though severe, is important. During the liquidation of the ghetto, 5,000 to 8,000 Jews were taken every day to Treblinka and murdered. During the entire war – more than five years – we saved only 2,500 children. The mathematics of rescue was also severe. To save one Jewish child, ten Poles and two Jews had to risk death. To betray that same child and the family that hid him required only one informer or, worse still, one blackmailer. The risk of being caught by the SS was not prison, but death – death for the entire family. “We all have to ask ourselves, ‘What would I have done?’ But understanding does not erase the regret I feel for my own insufficient efforts. Less than one percent. I agree with Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, one of the organizers of ZEGOTA, who said, ‘Only the dead have done enough.

Mother! Sarcasm is

Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland (published

As he [Irena's father] lay dying, he held his daughter's hand and told her that if she ever saw someone drowning, she must jump in and try to save that person, even if she could not swim.

July 23, 1942 – Guta Etinger -> Zofia Wacek – Praga, Markowska #21 When the door opened to Irena at Apartment 32, Ciepla #12, eight-year-old Guta was waiting. She stood very still behind a small battered valise, her legs so thin that her socks would not stay up. Her dark hair, though obviously just washed and braided, was dirty still. Guta’s mother tied a small red bow on one braid then straightened Guta’s soiled dress. Irena turned away – she could not watch these last few moments. Mr. Etinger’s voice hoarsened and cracked. “Take her, quickly. Don’t make us think about it any longer.” Irena lingered for a moment and repeated the pretense that made this desperate act possible. “After the war you’ll be reunited.” “I don’t think so,” he whispered. “But thank you for that, young lady.

Irena heard a faint cry – a strange mournful sound, like a mewling cat, muffled and hitching. A shadow moved along the wall – a woman wrapped in brown and gray rags like condensed smoke – holding a swaddled infant in the crook of her elbow. The woman stooped to pick up a small rock and heaved it over the wall, then retreated to crouch in the shadows. A moment later the same rock arched back over the wall from the Aryan side, and the woman stood up with intent, holding her bundle close to her chest and face. Even at this distance, Irena heard the woman suck two deep breaths, bend forward, swing her baby in both her arms, three times, and then with blazing purpose hurl it up in an arc that barely cleared the jagged glass atop the wall. No sound came back from the other side. The woman collapsed against the wall, her hands stroking the bricks, the two inches that separated her from her baby. She slunk away in the shadow of the wall.

Most onlookers dispersed before they reached the dreaded Umschlagplatz, and Irena stood a prudent distance away. If the day’s quota was not met, anyone nearby was liable to be seized and forced onto the train. There was no food or water, and not enough breeze to stir hair. The deportees’ meager belongings were bundled up in sheets or sacks, or stuffed into battered valises, many tied with twine. They relieved themselves where they stood on the dusty field for fear of becoming separated from children, a husband, a wife. SS and Ukrainian soldiers strutted through the pathetic crowd, cursing and whipping; the sadists laughed.

Every Pole knew what happened to families that were denounced by informers or szmalcowniki. According to eyewitnesses, the family would be lined up in the street, in full view of their neighbors. First the father was shot, then the mother was made to watch as her children were killed one at a time – first the Jewish children the family had been hiding, then her own. Finally, the mother herself was executed. Their bodies were left in the street as a warning to other Poles until the morgue wagon came for them the next day.

At the start of Irena’s second week in Pawiak she awakened to commotion in the hallway and the commandant’s boots slapping the floor outside the cell. “Don’t be afraid,” Basia whispered. “They’re not coming for you.” The commandant called out twelve names; cell doors clanked open and shut. Irena heard a woman cry out, “No! No! Please, no!” Another whimpered as she was dragged past Irena’s cell. Basia’s arm was around Irena. “The firing squad. They say it’s quick. They always come first thing in the morning. After that you’re safe. It’s horrible to live like this, but this is the way it is.

Why do we have to wait so long before meeting Irena?” “This I do not know,” Bieta said. “She’s very humble and probably considers herself the least important part of your visit. She doesn’t consider herself a hero, only a decent person. I was only six months old, yet Irena says that I was the hero – the hero of my mother’s heart. Irena says it is the parents and grandparents who are the heroes.

So many of those Irena saved, especially those saved as very young children and babies, don’t know that she was the one to whom they owe their lives. Many don’t even know that they are Jewish. During the war no one talked about it – such information could cost the lives of a rescuer’s entire family. They simply became the Catholic children of their foster parents. After the war, under Communism one did not admit to saving Jews. I myself did not discover that I was a rescued Jewish child until I was 17, when students at my high school began to call me a Jew. I didn’t understand, so I asked my adoptive mother, Stanislawa Bussoldowa, the midwife who delivered me. After the war, when I was three and a half, she adopted me from the care of my war-time nanny, Olga. She called Irena, who came right away and told me my story.

Irena wrote to us that many Jews wouldn’t give up their children because they didn’t believe the Germans would kill them. When did the Jews know that they would die?” “This is a profound question. The first message about the mass killings in Eastern Poland, like Ponary, around Vilna, comes to Warsaw almost a year before the liquidation of the ghetto. But this news only reaches a very small circle of people in the ghetto. The Ringelblum archives tell us that in the autumn of 1941 some people believed this, especially those active in the Underground. In March 1942, when Aktion Reinhard, the murder of the Jews in the General Gouvernement, began, a lot of common people from the east sent letters through the post to their relatives and friends in the Warsaw ghetto with the message: ‘They are killing us. Be careful. Take refuge, because they are killing us.

Our experience of death is so that the people from outside die, but we believe that we are exempt. We won’t die. It is also important to understand how difficult it is for people to realize that the whole ghetto, almost 400,000 will be sent to death. It is unbelievable. There is no precedent – this has never happened before. I think it is impossible for people to realize this story.

Megan said, “So you had to be rich to hide outside of the ghetto?” Leociak smiled. “This is the miracle with Irena. She gives the chance of escaping to the poorest ones who have no chance to escape because they have no money and no acquaintance. She is a light – a spiritual light in the darkness. She establishes the whole structure – the links of friends and hiding places for the people who can never establish this by themselves. Irena doesn’t help rich people in the ghetto. Rich people can manage by themselves, but the orphans from the poor families would certainly perish. Irena starts with the street orphans, the ones with nothing. She starts from the lowest level, the real helpless ones.

That is where I entered the sewer to escape,” she said. A little farther down she pointed to a street corner and said, “There I rifled the pockets of a dead man, looking for bread.” Megan tried to imagine Renata as a 14-year-old girl, only a year younger than herself, and what it must be like for her to still carry those memories. “What did you do every day?” Megan asked. “Books. I found books and would read them by daylight in a warehouse, sitting with corpses. Until the sewer, reading was my only escape.

Once again the difficulty involved her history teacher, ‘Pika,’ who harangued his students about minorities - Hungarians, Gypsies, Jews, Ukranians - ‘taking over Poland, like a cancer.’ In her last year, Irena wrote a paper about minorities entitled ‘Repairing Poland.’ Her thesis postulated that growing political chaos and the splintering of parties, accompanied by inflation, led to the scapegoating of minorities by the nationalist right, instigating fear and xenophobia. If this course was not corrected, she warned, Poland would follow an inexorable path to instability, coup d’etat, and, ultimately, self-destruction.