Upon the release Minister Ewa Junczyk-Ziomecka announced that on February 15, 2010, the centenary of the birth of Irena Sendler, Polish President Lech Kaczynski met with David Harris, Executive Director of the American Jewish Committee. During the meeting the President of Poland proposed the establishment of an International Day of Remembrance ofthe Righteous Among the Nations – similar to Holocaust Remembrance Day – on the Annual Birthday of Irena Sendler. The day would also recognize and serve as a Memorial to the 6,135 Poles who have been recognized as Righteous Among Nations.

President Lech Kaczynski was the first to put forward the proposal to honor Irena Sendler, a heroine to both Poles and Jews, with the Nobel Peace Prize. He obtained support for this initiative, from the then Israeli Prime Minister – Shimon Peres.

The proposal to honor these heroic Poles became the beginning of a bigger project to recognize Poles who saved Jews during the war. The President so far, has awarded hundreds of people during several ceremonies, and introduced them to the same pantheon of national heroes.

President Lech Kaczynski’s policy “To Restore Memory” has for four years honored Poles who saved Jews during the Holocaust. A ceremony on October 10 2007 at the Grand Theater in Warsaw was the first event of reflective tribute to the Polish Righteous Among the Nations for their unprecedented heroic attitude — not on the battlefield, but in private homes and forest hideouts – and at the risk of direct danger to life one’s own family, neighbors, and sometimes, a whole village.
A year later, on November 17 2008 at the National Theater in Warsaw, for Poles who saved Jews during the Holocaust were honored for a second time.

On August 27, 2009 during the celebration of the 65th anniversary of the liquidation of the Lodz Ghetto Litzmannstadt, a third group of Poles who saved Jews was honored before world leaders, and people acting on behalf of Polish-Jewish dialogue. On February 9, 2010 in Rzeszow, Poland the fourth group was honored for their heroism in saving Jews during World War II.

Two communities unite to honor a Holocaust hero.
by Bonnie Deutsch Burdman
Special to the CJN
Friday, May 21, 2010

It was a unique opportunity for two communities to come together as, some would say, unlikely friends.

More than 150 Jews and Polish Catholics were on hand at Youngstown State University April 25 for a screening of the documentary “In the Name of Their Mothers.” The film traces the remarkable story of Irena Sendler, a Polish Catholic social worker who is credited with saving some 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto during WW II. The program, co-sponsored by the Youngstown Area Jewish Federation, the YSU Center for Judaic and Holocaust Studies, and the Polish Arts Club of Youngstown, was the first collaboration of a Jewish and a Polish community anywhere for this type of program.

In attendance was Mary Skinner, the documentary’s director, who called the coming together of these two communities to explore Polish history during the Holocaust “remarkable.”

As director of community relations for the Youngstown Federation, I was privileged to introduce the program alongside Polish Arts Club president Mary Anne Mlynarski. The event provided an opportunity for the two communities to begin a conversation on the controversial history of Polish-Jewish relations.

“Many Holocaust survivors have negative attitudes toward Poles based on their experiences,” I told the crowd. “But there are also many Poles who believe that Jews give short shrift to showing that they (Poles) also suffered under the Nazi regime.”

Mlynarski recounted the history of the Polish Jewish community, saying that of the approximately 3 million Jews living in pre-war Poland, less than 30,000 remained afterward. “Polish Jews accounted for over half of all the victims of the Holocaust, and the death camps were established on Polish soil,” she said. “But what must be remembered is that a majority of the Righteous who are honored at Yad Vashem are Polish.”

International Jewish reaction to the recent deaths of Polish President Lech Kaczynski and senior Polish officials in an air disaster “highlights a remarkable change in how the Jewish world now views Poland,” I noted. “Those heartfelt sentiments probably could not have been made 20 or even 15 years ago.”

The program marked the North American première of the completed film. Previously, it had only been screened in Warsaw at a celebration of the 100th anniversary of Sendler’s birth.

“In the Name of their Mothers” recounts how Sendler and a group of young Polish women risked their lives establishing an elaborate underground network to save Jewish children from the ghetto. When the war began, Sendler, 29-year-old social worker, managed to obtain permits from the municipality that enabled her to enter the ghetto to “inspect sanitary conditions.”

Once the breadth of the Nazi “final solution” became evident, Sendler and her network of women began smuggling children out of the ghetto and sheltered them with families and in orphanages and monasteries throughout Poland. The children were given new Christian names as well as forged baptismal papers; however, Sendler kept detailed data on each child’s true identities so that she might reunite them with their families after the war.

Sendler became a major activist for the Council for Aid of Jews (Zegota) and was ultimately arrested, tortured and sentenced to death by the Gestapo in 1943. Zegota managed to bribe officials to release her while her sentence was carried out “on paper.”

On October 19, 1965, Yad Vashem recognized Irena Sendler as Righteous Among the Nations. She died in May 2008 at the age of 98.

Skinner moved to Warsaw in 2004 and spent five months interviewing Sendler. She also shot 70 hours of interviews of other rescuers and hidden children and conducted four years of archival research for the project.

Skinner described her creation of the documentary as a “labor of love” in honor of her mother, a Polish Catholic WW II orphan from Warsaw.

Aundrea Cika, director of Polish Youngstown, closed the program by challenging all in attendance to look beyond historical stereotypes and to ask themselves, “Who would we have been then? What choices would we have made? What choices are we making today?”

Bonnie Deutsch Burdman is director of Community Relations, Government Affairs for the Youngstown Area Jewish Federation.

100 Rocznica Urodzin Ireny Sendlerowej
(15.02.1910 –12.05.2008)

15 lutego 2010 r. przypada 100 rocznica urodzin Ireny Sendlerowej, Sprawiedliwej wsród Narodów Swiata, kobiety, która pomogla ocalic 2500 Zydowskich dzieci od Zaglady. Zapraszamy do odwiedzenia pierwszego w Polsce specjalnego serwisu jej poswieconego.

Premiera w Teatrze Kamienica

Muzeum Historii Zydów Polskich wraz z 2B Productions rozpoczely obchody uroczystoscia w Teatrze Kamienica na warszawskiej Woli, jednym z nielicznych budynków na terenie dawnego getta, który nie ulegl zniszczeniu. Pamiec Ireny Sendlerowej uczczona zostaaa projekcja filmu „In the Name of Their Mothers” („W imie ich matek – historia Ireny Sendlerowej”), dokumentujacego bohaterska dzialalnosc jej i wspólpracujacych z nia kobiet. Rezyserka filmu, Mary Skinner, odszukala mieszkajacych w Stanach Zjednoczonych ocalonych. Z jednym z nich, Williamem Donatem, powraca do Polski, by po kilkudziesieciu latach mógl spotkac Magdalene Grodzka-Gulkowska, jedna z pomocnic Sendlerowej, kobiete, która ocalila jego zycie.

Szczególnymi goscmi uroczystosci byli Sprawiedliwi wsród Narodów Swiata z Warszawy i okolic. Honorowy patronat nad obchodami objeli Prezydent Rzeczpospolitej Polskiej pan Lech Kaczynski oraz Prezydent Miasta Stolecznego Warszawy pani Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz.

Nasz mail: sprawiedliwi@jewishmuseum.org.pl