Love life like yourself ?!?!?

Irena Sendler receiving the In the Service of Health medal from Poland’s Minister of Health. Warsaw, October 1958

WARSAW (Reuters) – Irena Sendler, a Polish woman who saved thousands of Jewish children during World War Two by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto, died in the Polish capital on Monday after a long illness, local media said.

The web portal of Poland’s leading daily, Gazeta Wyborcza, said Sendler, 98, died in Plocka Street hospital early on Monday. The hospital declined to comment on the report.

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.

But in 1943 Sendler, who led the children’ section of the Zegota organization which helped Jews during the war, was arrested and tortured by the Gestapo.

97 years old

She only escaped execution when Zegota managed to bribe some Nazi officials, who left her unconscious but alive with broken legs and arms in the woods.

Taken From: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080512/wl_nm/poland_sendler_dc