a woman worth remembering.

Since it's Memorial Day and all . . .

Irena Sendler, who died May 12th at the age of 98, was a Polish social worker who helped save 2,500 Jewish children from the Nazis during World War II. An activist in the Polish Underground and Warsaw's Zegota Polish anti-Holocaust resistance, she provided the children with false documents and sheltered them in individual and group children's homes, protecting them from the horrors of the Warsaw Ghetto, which was rampant with disease, starvation, and continual deportation to concentration and extermination camps.

From the 1939 German invasion of Poland to her 1943 arrest by the Gestapo, Sendler helped the Jews by offering them food, shelter and false documentation. Once arrested, she was severely tortured and sentenced to death. Zegota saved her life by bribing German guards en route to her execution. She was left unconcious and with broken limbs out in the woods; her name was listed among the executed on public bulletin boards. She lived in hiding for the rest of the war, but continued her work for Jewish children.

In 2007, Sendler was among the nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize, which ultimately went to former Veep Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

In 2005, Ana Mieszkowska wrote Mother of the Children of the Holocaust: The Irena Sendler Story, which unfortunately has gone out of print. But recently, the Hallmark Hall of Fame announced it has begun production of a movie based upon the book.