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"The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler"

Movie and Discussion

Watch the movie, and join in the discussion afterwards, led by Michelle Edgar, Program Specialist for t​he Institute of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Raritan Valley Community College.

This movie will run for ninety five minutes. Michelle Edgar, Program Specialist for the Institute of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Raritan Valley Community College will arrive at 3:30-4:15 p.m. to lead a discussion on the movie. 

Elzbieta Ficowska was just five months old when she was placed in a carpenter’s box and smuggled out of the Warsaw Ghetto. She was placed with a Polish family on the “Aryan” side of the wall, and the young woman who carried her out of the Ghetto added tiny little Elzbieta’s name, parents’ names and new address to a piece of tissue paper, on which were written the details of other children she had smuggled out. These pieces of tissue paper were placed in a jar that was later buried under an apple tree in the back yard of a friend’s home.

The young woman who saved this child, and went on to save 2,500 more children from the Nazis, was 29-year-old Irena Sendler, a Polish Catholic social worker. Unlike the names in the jar, which were unearthed soon after the Nazis’ defeat, Irena’s story, and that of her fellow rescuers remained buried for nearly sixty years. That began to change in 1999, when four students at rural Uniontown High School in Kansas began researching possible projects for the National History Day competition.

Learn about this very selfless, courageous woman as we celebrate Women's History Month. 

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