So often, people speak of morality and idealogies as if they are a fable or a mask that we can put on and take off at will. While I’m sure that there are people with that capability, I am not one of them. I always strive to do right, even in the face of adversity and pressure from others.
That being said, I have a great deal of respect for those that require of themselves, regardless of outcome or recognition, that they do the right thing.
I don’t know why I started thinking about Irena Sendler today, but I did. Do you know who she is? Honestly, I doubt it. That’s okay, but she’s a woman that I greatly admire for her courage. She was the female equivalent of (and dare I say, more courageous than) Oskar Schindler.
Let me give you just a bit of history. Irena was a social worker that, after obtaining fake identification to pass herself off as a nerse, used boxes, suitcases, sacks, and coffins, to smuggle jewish children out of german held Poland in 1939.
In 1943, she was captured by the Nazis and tortured. She refused to tell her captors who her co-conspirators were. During one particularly terrible tortue session, they broke her feet and legs and eventually passed out from the pain. When she came to, one of the Gestapo officers told her that he had accepted a bribe from comrades in the resistance to help her escape.
She continued her efforts, even despite having almost been killed countless times by the Nazis and being tortured.
All told, she saved close to 3,000 Polish Jews from the gas chambers; a great many of them were children. She had kept a record of each child’s name on a slip of paper and buried them all in jars in a friend’s garden. When the war was over, she unearthed the jars and went about reuniting families with their children.
Irena, to me, is an example of a person who does everything they can, wherever they are, to help as many people as possible. Period. Her faith and her beliefs required it of her, and despite being beaten and broken, being hurt and being worked over by the Gestapo, she prevailed and worked against them even still.
It’s a shame that there are probably countless other people in history who were the same, did as much or more, but we’ll never know. History is written by the conquerers and by those that squilch martyrdom.
Of note, Irena lived to be 98, and died in Warsaw, Poland on May 12th, 2008. I have the utmost respect for people like her, and I will be thinking about her the rest of the day. You should too. Do right in your life today, and do all that you can for those around you.
Don’t fall in to the complacency that leads so many astray. Follow your heart.