Unsung Heroine of the Polish Ghetto

Let me stress most emphatically that we who were rescuing 

children are not some kind of heroes.  Indeed, that term 

irritates me greatly.  The opposite is true.  I continue to
have pangs of conscience that I did so little.

Irena Sendler in 1942.

Thanks to Steven Spielberg, most people have heard of Oskar Schindler.  Few people have heard of Irene Sendler.  Yet the Polish Catholic social worker helped save some 2,500 Jewish children during WWII.

Image courtesy of this site.

She was born to a physician who died when she was seven from typhus contracted from his patients, many of them Jews that other physicians wouldn't treat.  Jewish community leaders offered to pay for her education; she had close links to the Jewish community and even spoke Yiddish by the age of seven.  In 1935, ghetto benches were introduced in Polish universities - segregated seating in a special section where Jewish students were forced to sit under threat of expulsion.  Sendler was opposed to this and sat with her Jewish friends, and thus was almost expelled. A professor intervened, allowing her to continue with her studies.

Jewish children in the Warsaw Ghetto.

This early testament to her ethical beliefs was a harbinger to her future endeavors. The Zegota, a codename for the Polish Council to Aid Jews, existed for the express purpose of helping Polish Jews get to safety.  Poland was the only country in occupied Europe to have a dedicated secret organization.  Prior to joining the Zegota, Sendler with a group of other like-minded people created over 3,000 false documents to help Jewish families.  This was an extremely risky undertaking, as Poland had the most severe punishment of all occupied European nations for anyone harboring Jews.  She was selected by the Zegota in 1943 to head the children's section.  Since she was employed by the Social Welfare Department she had a special permit to enter the Warsaw Ghetto to check for signs of typhus. Under this pretext, she and others smuggled babies and small children in ambulances, packages, and even a toolbox.  She also used an old courthouse and sewer pipes as routes to smuggle children out.

1942 poster warning of death for any Pole who aided Jews.

Sendler assured the children that they would be reunited with their relatives when the war was over.  The group hid lists keeping track of everyone they rescued in jars buried in the ground.  She worked with a Catholic orphanage in Warsaw, convents, and parishes to place the children.  She was arrested in 1943 by the Gestapo, who tortured her and sentenced her to death.  She bribed her guards who released her on her way to her execution, but was listed on a public bulletin as one of the executed.  She lived in hiding until the end of the war, but continued aiding Jewish children.  After the war she turned over her lists, but most of the families of the children had been exterminated or were missing.

Image courtesy of this site.

During the Soviet takeover of Poland she was persecuted for being in contact with the Polish government in exile.  She was not allowed to travel abroad by the Polish communist government to Israel to receive the Commander's Cross she was awarded by the Israeli Institute in 1964.  She finally received it in 1984.  She was also honored with the Righteous Among the Nations, a medal awarded by the State of Israel to non-Jews who saved Jews during the Holocaust.  In 2003, fellow Pole and rescuer Pope John Paul II send her a personal letter of praise.  That same year she was given the Order of the White Eagle, Poland's highest civilian honor.  She received many other awards.  She was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, but lost to Al Gore for his work on global warming.

Sendler in 2005.

She died in 2008, known and honored by those who were aware of the efforts to save those threatened by the Holocaust, but little known to the world in general. She first came to public awareness in the year 2000, when a group of Kansas schoolgirls wrote a play about her called Life in a Jar.  A documentary was made featuring her last interviews.  It premiered earlier this year on PBs in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day - Irena Sendler, In the Name of Their Mothers.  But to those she saved, and their progeny, she will be loved and remembered always.

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Images, unless otherwise noted, courtesy of Wikipedia.

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Pope John Paul II, the Holocaust, and Star Trek

The Western Wall in Jerusalem.

In March 2000, eleven years ago, Pope John Paul II visited Yad Vashem, the national Holocaust memorial in Israel.  He also made history by going to the Western Wall in Jerusalem, where he left the following note:

"We are deeply saddened by the behavior of those who in the 

course of history have caused these children of yours to suffer, 

and asking your forgiveness we wish to commit ourselves to 

genuine brotherhood with the people of the Covenant."

As part of an address he gave he said, "I assure the Jewish people the Catholic Church...is deeply saddened by the hatred, acts of persecution and displays of anti-Semitism directed against the Jews by Christians at any time and in any place."  He added that there were "no words strong enough to deplore the terrible tragedy of the Holocaust."

Pope John Paul II in Denver in 1993.

Israeli cabinet minister Rabbi Michael Melchios commented on the Pope's gesture stating, "It was beyond history, beyond memory"

It is not surprising that the Pontiff had such strong feelings about the Holocaust. He had spent his formative years with close relationships within the Jewish community of his hometown.  As a young priest in his native Poland, he had to hide in his uncle's attic from the Nazis, and according to B'nai B'rith and others, he helped protect many Polish Jews from the Nazis.

In January 2005, John Paul II became the first pope in history to receive a priestly blessing from a rabbi.  Rabbis Benjamin Blech, Barry Dov Schwartz, and Jack Bemporad were visiting Pope John Paul II at Clementine Hall in the Apostolic Palace when they bestowed it.  The priestly blessing is a Jewish prayer based on scriptural verse (Numbers 6:24-27).  It can only be performed by a Kohen (plural Kohanim), a Jewish priest.  It is the oldest Biblical text that has been found, and is said to be connected to the three Patriarchs:  Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

During the course of the blessing the Kohen holds up his hands with the fingers separated to make five spaces between them, his head and hands covered so neither he nor the congregation can see his hands.  The position of each hand forms a Hebrew letter which is the first letter in the name of God that refers to him as a protector.

The hands are divided into twenty-eight sections, each with a Hebrew letter.
At the bottom of the hand are two letters, which combined are the name of God. 

In the mid-60s, Leonard Nimoy created a one-handed version of this gesture to accompany Spock's Vulcan greeting, "Live Long and Prosper".  He explained that as a child, raised in a traditional Jewish home, he peeked under the cloth and saw the gesture.  He and Gene Roddenberry thought it would be a good physical accompaniment for the greeting, and it went on to great fame.

Vulcan Salute.

Pope John Paul II will be remembered for his apologies.  Beside his apologies to the Jews, he also made public apologies for: the legal procedure on Galileo; the Catholics' involvement with the African Slave Trade; the Church's roles in the burnings at the stake and religious wars that followed the Protestant Reformation; and injustices committed against women, the violation of their rights, and their historical denigration.  (Although he upheld the traditional Catholic take on birth control and women in the priesthood.)

In a time when religious persecution is rearing its ugly head again, when people are dividing each other into biased groupings, we need to remember people like Pope John Paul II.  As an atheist even I can remember with gratitude his good works.  May the whole world live long and prosper...

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Images courtesy of Wikipedia.

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Mighty Maus

When the graphic novel Maus first came out, I bought it without knowing anything about it because “Maus” was my German grandmother’s maiden name.  Of course I knew it wasn’t about my family, but upon reading it I was delighted.  No, not with the sad story (which is about a Polish, Jewish Holocaust survivor and his son), but with the art work.  Maus was a graphic novel for adults, not kids, thus changing the genre into an adult art form.

The Ur-Maus was a three-page strip that was printed in 1972 in Funny Animals, an underground comix published by Apex Novelties.  Art Spiegelman went on to lengthen the piece and published it serially in RAW magazine, a magazine he co-edited with Françoise Mouly, his wife.  Its final form was a two-volume graphic novel.  Volume I:  My Father Bleeds History was published in 1986, and Volume II:  And Here My Troubles Began was published in 1991.  Eventually Maus was published in a single volume, and also came out on CD-ROM.

Translated into 18 languages, Maus has been the subject of numerous essays, and one can find online college course syllabi that either focus on or include the work.  Spiegelman won a Pulitzer Prize for Maus in 1992, as well as many other prizes and nominations worldwide.

He studied art and philosophy at Harpur College in New York, and then went on to join the underground comix movement. Using various pseudonyms (Joe Cutrate, Al Flooglebuckle, and Skeeter Grant) he created the comix “Nervous Rex”, “Ace Hole, Midget Detective”, and others.  In 1975 he founded Arcade with Bill Griffith, a comix revue which featured artists such as Robert Crumb.

He was a creative consultant for Topps Candy from 1965-1986, famously designing “Garbage Pail Kids”.    He taught the history and aesthetics of comics from 1979-1986 at the School for Visual Arts in New York, before founding the acclaimed avant-garde comics magazine RAW in 1980.  He was a staff artist and writer for The New Yorker from 1993-2003, and published an anthology of his work there entitled Kisses from New York.  He and his wife created an exceptional cover for the magazine after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.  He later used the image in a graphic novel about his experience of the attack, called In the Shadow of No Towers.  He later wrote a children’s book, Open Me…I’m a Dog.  Currently he is editor of a series of comics anthologies for children called Little Lit.

But he will always be remembered, honored, and respected for his audacious and (at the time) controversial use of the comics form to expand Holocaust literature.  This juxtaposition of a genre of humor with one of the most tragic stories of our time was inspired and daring.  Additionally it weaves two stories together – Holocaust survivor and a second generation survivor whom the Holocaust affected significantly even though he was not born during its occurrence – which distinguishes it greatly from other Holocaust narratives.

Some say that great art comes from great tragedy.  In the case of Maus, Spiegelman not only became the world’s most famous graphic artist, influencing generations to come, but retold one of the most horrendous stories of human suffering and devastation in a new way,  causing readers to look upon it differently.

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