Library hosts speaker on Irena Sendler

In 1999, four Uniontown High School girls went to the post office to mail a letter to Poland. They were working on a National History Day project and had wanted to tell the story of Irena Sendler, a forgotten heroine of Nazi-occupied Warsaw during World War II.
Sendler is credited with saving about 2,500 Jewish children from certain death in the Nazi concentration camps.
As they dropped the letter into the mailbox, Megan Stewart Felt and the other girls had to wonder if a 90-year old woman in Poland would even respond to four girls from rural Kansas.
They got a reply — in Polish. After hunting down a translator, the girls heard Irena’s first words.
“To my dear and beloved girls…” the letter began.
And so began a journey that, for Sendler, had started more than 60 years ago and, for Felt, would mark a period of her life full of turmoil and triumph that would change her forever.

SENDLER was born in 1910. She was 28 when the Nazis occupied Poland, sent all the Jews to the Ghetto in Warsaw and began to systematically exterminate them. Sendler, a Roman Catholic, saw an opportunity to use her job as a social worker to falsify documents and smuggle Jewish children out of Warsaw and out of Nazi hands.
With 25 collaborators, Sendler created an underground network. In one of her most famous escapes, she smuggled a child out of the Ghetto in a carpenter’s bag. At the last minute, the little girl’s parents gave Sendler a silver spoon with the girl’s name inscribed on it — Elzbieta — so that she would not forget who she was.
At this point in the story, Felt opened a small case and held aloft the spoon for all to see.
Elzbieta escaped. Her father was killed when he refused to get on the train to Treblinka Extermination Camp.
“He kept saying, ‘I have a little girl,’” Felt said. “They shot him and stuffed him in a trash can.”
Elzbieta’s mother got on the train, and soon after died in the gas showers.
Sendler recorded the names of the children on lists which she buried in her yard in jars. Their identities remained buried, secret, but alive. It would be many years until the four girls from Kansas unearthed Sendler’s story.

FOR FELT, Sendler’s story was deeply personal, in part because she learned of Sendler at the same time her mother was undergoing treatment for cancer and her father was disabled and looking at a double hip replacement. On top of that, Felt was going through the angst that all young girls feel in high school.
“If she could go every day and walk past the Nazis, I could survive my mom’s cancer,” Felt said.
The girls turned Sendler’s story into a play, “Life in a Jar,” and began to perform it at schools and functions. A Jewish businessman saw it and offered to help them raise money to go to Poland and meet Sendler.
“Within 24 hours he called and said ‘I’ve got the money. You’re going to Poland,’” Felt said.
Felt’s mother was in remission at the time and was able to go with them to visit Sendler in 2000. For Felt, that meant seeing two of the strongest women in the world together.
Sendler died in 2008 at the age of 98, on Felt’s 18th birthday. Shortly before that, Felt’s mother had passed away from the cancer.
“I have a little girl now,” Felt said quietly. “She’ll be 4 at the end of the month. She looks just like my mother and acts just like my brother.”
Felt said her daughter often speaks of these strong women — her grandmother and Sendler. Their stories and their memories live on.
“It’s pretty amazing having two guardian angels watching over us,” Felt said.

THE AUDIENCE was deeply touched by Felt’s presentation.
“I didn’t know about her personal conflict with her mom and the cancer,” said Lillian Orzechowski, rural LaHarpe. “That was very touching. I’m glad she got to go to Poland with them.”
More than 40 people attended the event.
“I think it was a good turnout,” said Colleen Dobbins, circulation desk librarian. “We set up about 20 chairs to start with and they just kept coming.”
Felt left information with the library about LowellMilkenCenter.org, which supports projects to tell the stories of unsung heroes like Sendler. In addition, the library has set up a special display of novels, nonfiction books, videos and more about the Holocaust and World War II. “Life in a Jar” has already been checked out, but will return soon.
IrenaSendler.org has more information about Sendler, Felt and the other girls and when and where to see the play “Life in a Jar,” which is still touring the country and going strong. All proceeds from the play go directly to help Holocaust survivors.
“The story has changed my life and given me hope when I didn’t have any hope in my life,” Felt said. “I want to share that with people, especially young people, because I want them to realize as individuals they have an opportunity to change the world, to make a difference.”
Felt would also like, most of all, to some day go to Israel and perform “Life in a Jar.” She would like to visit Yad Vashen, where a tree has been planted in Sendler’s memory.
If she could say one thing to Sendler, it would be, “thank you for doing what was right, against all odds.”