Irena Sendler, a Polish Righteous Gentile, passed away this Monday at the age of 98. She and those she organized saved over 2500 Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto, using her position as a social worker to gain access to the Ghetto and its inhabitants. I was particularly moved by her words:
"Every child saved with my help and the help of all the wonderful secret messengers, who today are no
longer living, is the justification of my existence on this earth, and not a title to glory," Sendler said in
2007 in a letter to the Polish Senate after lawmakers honored her efforts in 2007.
AP Article: Polish Holocaust hero dies at age 98 - Yahoo! News
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Challenges of Holocaust Survivor Immigrants to the US
After a Fight to Survive, One to Succeed - New York Times
(see link above for full article)
They came to New York as “displaced persons” in the early 1950s, Jewish refugees who had survived the Holocaust. Today, in film and story, such survivors are treated with a kind of awe, and their arrival in America is considered a happy ending. But a very different picture, with an oddly contemporary twist, emerges from the yellowing pages of social service records now being rescued from oblivion at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan.
The files, from a major Jewish resettlement agency that handled tens of thousands of cases, show that many of these refugees walked a gantlet of resistance and distrust: disapproval of their lack of English and need for health care, threats of deportation, and agency rules shaped by a suspicion of freeloading.(see link above for full article)
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