Poland paused this week to pay tribute to
Irena Sendler -- a Catholic social worker who risked her life during World War II to smuggle 2,500 children from the Warsaw Ghetto, saving them from the ravages of the Holocaust.
Yad Vashem chairman Avner Shalev said: "Irena Sendler's courageous activities rescuing Jews during the Holocaust serve as a beacon of light to the world, inspiring hope and restoring faith in the innate goodness of mankind."
Using her position as a social worker, Sendler regularly entered the ghetto, smuggling around 2,500 children out in boxes, suitcases or hidden in trolleys.
The children were then placed with Polish families outside the ghetto, created by Nazi Germany in 1940 for the city's half a million strong Jewish population, and given new identities.
"The term 'hero' irritates me greatly. The opposite is true. I continue to have pangs of conscience that I did so little," Sendler said in one of her last interviews.
clipped from: whispersintheloggia.blogspot.com 
Poland paused this week to pay tribute to Irena Sendler -- a Catholic social worker who risked her life during World War II to smuggle 2,500 children from the Warsaw Ghetto, saving them from the ravages of the Holocaust.