Religion Roundup
Woman Who Saved 2,500 Jewish Children from Holocaust Dies at 98
The Associated Press
May 13, 2008
WARSAW, Poland - Irena Sendler -- credited with saving some 2,500 Jewish children from the Nazi Holocaust by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto -- has died at the age of 98.
Sendler's daughter says her mother died Monday at a Warsaw hospital.
Sendler was a young social worker with the city's welfare department when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, launching World War II. Warsaw's Jews were forced into a walled-off ghetto.
Under the pretext of inspecting sanitary conditions during a typhoid outbreak, she and her assistants ventured into the ghetto and smuggled out babies and small children, sometimes wrapped up as packages.
Teenagers escaped by joining teams of workers forced to labor outside the ghetto.
The Nazis captured Sendler in 1943 and tortured her, but she refused to betray her team.
Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
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