BBC NEWS | Europe | Pole who saved ghetto Jews dies
Rated • 22 reviews • history, humanitarianism, holocaust, polish • bbc.co.uk
Irena Sendlerowa, a Polish heroine of the Holocaust, has died at 98 years of age.
Irena was a member of the clandestine Zegota organization, an underground effort that assisted Jewish citizens in Nazi occupied Poland. She is credited with saving the lives of over 2,500 Jewish children. (More than twice the number of lives saved by Oscar Schindler!) But Irena did not see her own deeds as heroic, while speaking of herself and her accomplishments she said:
"I am not a hero. A hero is someone doing extraordinary things.
What I did was not extraordinary. It was a normal thing to do."
