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Irena Sendler, whose efforts saved 2,500 children in Holocaust, dies at 98

Nine years ago, few knew how Irena Sendler had saved 2,500 children during the Holocaust. But because of the work of four Kansas high school girls and their teacher, when Sendler died Monday tributes from across the world poured in. Sendler was 98.

“We have lost a giant of the human race,” said Norm Conard, the KNEA member in Uniontown, Kan., who in 1999 suggested four students do a history project on Sendler. A social worker in the mid-1940s, Sendler risked her life saving the young children in the Warsaw ghetto and put their names in a jar so she could later reunite them with their families.

Last year, Sendler was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. People who want to leave a tribute can go to www.irenasendler.org .

Uniontown member Norm Conard received the 2003 KNEA Human and Civil Rights Award for class assignments that had his students producing multicultural films and dramas. "The Holocaust and Life in a Jar," about Irena Sendler, won national acclaim.

For the students and Conard, it became the story of Protestant kids from Kansas discovering a Catholic woman in Poland who saved Jewish children from the Warsaw ghetto.

The 18-minute documentary illlustrated Sendler's work as a member of the Zegota, a Polish underground group whose purpose was to save Jews from the Germans occupying Poland. At personal risk, Sendler smuggled 400 Jewish children from the Warsaw ghetto and helped to arrange the rescue of some 2,500 children from certain death.

The children were given new identities and adopted by Christian families, who also faced execution if the Germans found out what they had done. Sendler wrote down each child's real name on pieces of paper and buried them in a glass jar near her home. In 1943, Sendler was captured and tortured by the Germans, who broke her arms and legs. They demanded the list of children, but she refused.

Conard's students, Megan Steward, Elizabeth Cambers, Janice Underwood and Sabrina Coons, discovered Sendler was still alive and they visited the then 92-year-old in Poland. The Polish government didn't know of Sendler's background and moved her from her impoverished neighborhood to a retirement community. The students continued to raise funds for Sendler.

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