Warsaw - Polish resistance fighter Irena Sendlerowa, who
organized the rescue of 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto
during Nazi occupation, died Monday aged 98, Polish radio reported.
Sendlerowa was part of the Zegota resistance movement. Together
with a group of 20 helpers, she smuggled 2,500 children out of the
Warsaw Ghetto in ambulances, through sewers and once under her skirt.
She then obtained forged identity cards for them and hid the
children with foster families, at monasteries and orphanages.
'Irena Sendlerowa rescued the future of the Jewish people,' Piotr
Kadlcik, the head of the Jewish Community in Poland, told Radio
Information Agency (IAR).
Sendlerowa made a coded list of the children's names, which she
hid in her cellar, in the hope of reuniting them with their families
after the war.
She was later arrested and tortured by the Gestapo, but never gave
details of the resistance movement's work nor did she reveal the
children's names.
Members of the resistance movement bribed SS guards at the Gestapo
prison where Sendlerowa was held and she was saved on the day of her
scheduled execution.
In 2006, Poland and Israel recommended Sendlerowa for the Nobel
Peace Prize and the latter awarded her the title 'Righteous Among the
Nations'.
Last year, the Polish parliament passed a unanimous resolution
honouring her for organizing the 'rescue of the most defenceless
victims of the Nazi ideology - the Jewish children.'
Similar to German factory owner Oscar Schindler, Sendlerowa
long remained little known to the public.
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