Irena Sendler, Polish unsung heroine, died Monday at the age of 98 (stories here, here and here; HT: Whispers in the Loggia). She was a social worker in Warszawa when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939. Soon after the invasion and occupation of Warszawa, the Nazis set up a walled-off ghetto within the city limits. Whereas social workers weren’t allowed into the ghetto by the Nazis, sanitation workers were. She passed herself off as one and brought food, clothes, and medicine to ghetto occupants. But that’s not all she did.
By 1942, she and other members of the brave Zegota resistance organization began smuggling children out of the ghetto in ambulances, suit cases, and boxes (among other things). Irena, a Catholic, is credited with the rescue of at least 2500 Jewish children.
She took the children to various locations and gave them Polish aliases to ensure their safety. Meanwhile, she recorded their true names on scraps of paper and buried them in a friend’s garden, so that the children could be reunited with their parents following the war. Unfortunately, for too many of the children, their parents wouldn’t survive the war. So, the children were adopted by Polish families or sent to Israel.
In 1943, Ms. Sendler was captured and tortured by the Gestapo. She was to be executed. But a Gestapo officer took a bribe from one of her comrades in the Zegota and she was “released.” In spite of her suffering, she continued to help rescue people from Nazi persecution.
Ms. Sendler, according to a British newspaper in 2005, said: “I was taught that if you see a person drowning, you must jump into the water to save them, whether you can swim or not.” Perhaps a bit brash; in light of the Nazi regime, certainly courageous.
[...] Read the rest of this great post here [...]
That’s too bad we have to see another great person leave this world. We need more people like her now.
Sorry that most of my comment is going to be on something entirely different from the topic.
But I was trying to see if I could find definitions of inductive and deductive arguments on the web that actually made some sense. I used to be in your intro class and I googled it, hoping I would find those amazingly helpful powerpoints of yours. sadly I couldn’t find any, but lucky for me I found this blog. hehe. I would really appreciate it if you don’t mind refreshing my memory on what the two types of arguments were or if there is a link to the powerpoints that I don’t know of…, whatever works is fine by me.
PS- I probably ask too much…but could you also include strong, weak, validity, soundness of the arguments.
Thanks a ton!