May we never complain for feeling under appreciated.

This is a serious smatchoo post. It may be the big kahuna smatchoo of all smatchoos.

Irena Sendler, was a member of Zegota, a Polish underground organization formed to aid Jews in escaping the fates of the Holocaust.

Irena, by the circumstance of her race and position in Warsaw, Poland was safe from Nazi persecution. But she risked her life to save an estimated 2,500 Jewish children from death.

While working for the Social Welfare Department, Irena had permission to enter Warsaw’s ghetto to check for signs of disease or other sanitary issues that Nazi’s were afraid could cause on outbreak beyond the ghetto. With each visit, she disguised children as packages, or hid them in coffins or potato sacks to bring them to Polish families until they could be reunited with their Jewish family members. Irena also trained dogs to bark to cover children’s cries from German guards. The names and secret identities of her saved were placed in jars that she kept buried until after the war so she could continue her work in reuniting families.

A year after working under Zegota, Irena was arrested by the Gestapo and they broke her arms and legs because of the information she withheld from the Nazi’s. Given the choice to save her life, she refused and was sentenced to execution.

But because of the very nature of Hitler’s men, the executioners were able to be bribed to spare her life. Left beaten in the woods and then kept in hiding for the remainder of the war, Irena dug up her jars of names and began tracing their blood relatives.

A year before Irena died in May of 2008, she was nominated for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

She lost.

To Al Gore’s presentation on global warming.

So that every syllable rings clear in your ear, What is the matter with you, Politics?

But I doubt Al Gore will ever get A Righteous Among the Nations Award, which Irena did receive some years before.