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I was told to bring cookies to Irena Sendler. But that made no sense. This elderly woman in a Warsaw nursing home was a diabetic and couldn’t eat them.
They’re not for her, I was told. They are so she can give them to her nurses and other visitors.
I should have known. Even in small things, Irena Sendler, whom I was privileged to meet in 2004, was gracious, compassionate and caring.
But it was for a big thing that she will be remembered.
Working with a section of the Polish underground in World War II, Sendler helped to save some 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto.
She was the subject of a play, “Life in a Jar,” written by schoolchildren from Uniontown, Kan. It has been performed more than 200 times in various locations, including Kansas City. She also was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.
I went to Poland, home of all my grandparents, for other reasons. But I asked my hosts to set up a meeting with Sendler.
When she heard a rabbi from Kansas City wanted to see her, she agreed.
The gracious, diminutive woman I met had lively eyes and spoke quite clearly, saying she was honored that a rabbi wanted to meet her.
Little did she know the effect she would have on me and the project she would stir me to undertake.
Since her death May 12 at age 98, I have seen her described as the “female Oscar Schindler” of book and movie “Schindler’s List” fame.
But perhaps Schindler should be called the “male Irena Sendler,” given that she saved many more Jews than did Schindler.
And yet, it’s not about numbers. It’s about the willingness to risk one’s life to save someone else, since the penalty for helping Jews in Poland then was death.
When I came back to the U.S., I decided to work on a book about other non-Jews in Poland who saved Jews in the Holocaust.
Kansas City Star Faith columnist Bill Tammeus and I are nearly done with the manuscript, which will tell many stories of people who risked their lives in the way Irena Sendler did.
In Jewish tradition we say that when you save one life you save the whole world. Imagine all the worlds Irena Sendler saved.
Maybe in her honor today I will give away some cookies.
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