I read quite a few accounts of Irena Sendler’s story at the time of her death. Remarkable person. So, too, must have been the members of the Polish Underground who helped her pull this off, and the many Polish citizens who took these little children in and harbored them for years despite the near certainty that they would themselves be killed if they were found to be hiding Jews. Irena Sendler’s recognition was a long time coming, though she didn’t ever seek any recognition, because the Communists weren’t interested in honoring heroes who were not communists. Then the children she saved grew up, and they began to tell her story, and eventually Israel recognized her as a Righteous Gentile, but that was in the late 60’s and the communists didn’t let her go receive the award. She finally got to go after Reagan took the wrecking ball to the Evil Empire. Most of the obituaries mentioned that she was a Nobel Prize nominee. She deserved that, IMHO, but realistically the politico-social climate internationally is not such that a person whose main claim to fame was saving Jews is going to be applauded as a Nobel laureate, and I doubt if Al Gore would have been selected for a Nobel Prize if it were not an opportunity for the European intellectual weiners to give a symbolic middle finger salute to President Bush.
Very Well Said.