"The future will need your compassion..."

"...even more so than now"

Irena Sendler, may her brave, beautiful soul rest in peace, constitutes a hero. Sendler, who saved 2500 Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto during the Holocaust is the topic of the 2009 Hallmark movie The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler.

A beautiful but harrowing depiction of life within the Ghetto, the fear many Jewish families faced and, as the title suggests, the courageous hearts of many bystanders, this film goes well with kleenexes, and teddy bears to hug.

The film was, however, heartbreaking. The screams of children and mothers as they were seperated is enough to break anyone's heart, and the brutality enforced and performed by the Nazi soldiers, while Sendler reminded herself, and her own mother: "You see a man drowning and you must try to save him, even if you cannot swim". This woman deserves the recognition and awards she received if anyone does, in my opinion.

The opening of the film, in which a German solider tells Sendler, a social worker assessing the state of the refuge centres for typhus: "You Pols must solve this problem, it's a disgrace" really shows the degree in which this belief system, the ideologies, were rooted. It is no one's fault for an outbreak of a disease, other than those that set up the Ghetto and forced the Jews into such a confined space with such little resource and proper clothing, bedding, etc.

I feel this movie should be on your list if you are planning a trip to Auschwitz for sure, as it offers a different side of the story: what was done by those that had the opportunity to help, and how others risked their lives for something they believed in, as Sendler so courageously did.

This film, if anything, got me thinking. What are the stories of the other men and women that did acts such as this? Whatever happened to the children, the families? Were any reunited? And really, what was it like to be herded onto the trains to Auschwitz?

I may have to do some further research to answer these, but, I hope to have a better idea of the latter, tomorrow. I will be meeting with Philip Riteman, who I mentioned in my last blogpost. Check back over the next day or two with an update about that.

"Act as if what you do makes a difference.  It does" -William James