Warsaw Ghetto hero Irena Sendlerowa, honoured by the Polish parliament last year, died in a Warsaw hospital at the age of 98. Working as a social worker during the Second World War, Sendlerowa saved about 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto.
A member of the Zegota resistance movement, Sendlerowa led a team of 20 social workers that would take children from the Ghetto and place them into hiding, often with Christian Polish families that would take them in as their own children. Even though she was arrested and tortured by the Gestapo, she did not reveal the names of the children she saved, and was eventually saved from execution by the Polish underground resistance.
In addition to being honoured by the Polish parliament last year, she had also been awarded the title Righteous Among the Nations by Israel in 1965, and has been recognized as a hero by the World Jewish Congress and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize last year. |