12th
This is a lovely, fascinating story, but also I strongly agree with Ben’s take. And this is not just about Al Gore; the timing makes it pretty indisputable that this has been brought up to discredit Obama’s win as well, by trivializing the judgment of the committee. Nonetheless, an incredible woman.
Irena Sendler
1910-2008
A 98 year-old German woman named Irena Sendler recently died. During WWII, Irena worked in the Warsaw Ghetto as a plumbing/sewer specialist. Irena smuggled Jewish children out; infants in the bottom of the tool box she carried and older children in a burlap sack she carried in the back of her truck. She also had a dog in the back that she trained to bark when the Nazi soldiers let her in and out of the ghetto. The soldiers wanted nothing to do with the dog, and the barking covered the kids’ and infants’ noises. Irena managed to smuggle out and save 2500 children.
She eventually was caught, and the Nazis broke both her legs, arms and beat her severely. Irena kept a record of the names of all the kids she smuggled out and kept them in a glass jar buried under a tree in her backyard. After the war, she tried to locate any parents that may have survived and reunited some of the families. Most had been killed. She helped those children get placement into foster family homes or adopted.
Last year Irena was up for the Nobel Peace Prize. She was not selected. Al Gore won - for a slide show on Global Warming.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/sendler.aspHow disgusting, to use this woman’s story to take a cheap shot at Al Gore.
And let’s be honest, that last sentence is the only reason it was posted in the first place. I have no doubt whoever originally composed this email forward — probably a 19 year-old intern at the Republican National Committee — had never heard of Irena Sendler until after the Peace Prize had been awarded to The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Al Gore, until after he had been assigned the task of finding “dirt” to undermine the news, lest people take climate change seriously. No doubt he was excited when he found the IFSW’s press release. No doubt he was excited about how he could spin his discovery: slide show douchebag Al Gore steals Nobel prize from a 98 year-old WWII heroine.
Never mind that she received plenty of appropriate recognition in her lifetime, from the government of Israel, the government of Poland, Pope John Paul II, the IFSW, and others. Never mind that the work she did, admirable though it is, doesn’t quite fit the scope of the Nobel Peace Prize. Never mind that Gore did a lot more than simply create “a slide show on Global Warming.” There is no great injustice here.
If you’re still upset that Clinton defeated Bush in 1992, I’m sorry, but don’t drag good people like Irena Sendler into your petty political bullshit.
