Irena Sendler or Al Gore?

I learned something recently that kind of bothered me so this will go under the category of annoyances.

A Polish woman, Irena Sendler, who lived from 1910 to 2008 experienced life during the Holocaust. She worked in the Warsaw Ghetto as a plumbing/sewer specialist. Irena had found herself dedicated to smuggling Jewish children out of the ghetto. For infants she would hide them at the bottom of her toolbox and for children she would put in a burlap sack in the back of her truck.

She even trained her dog to bark when Nazi soldiers let her in and out of the ghetto. The soldiers wanted nothing to do with the dog so the barking covered up the infant and children’s noises. During this time she managed to save 2500 children. She kept all the children’s names in a glass jar buried in her backyard underneath a tree. After the war, she did her best to locate the parents to give the children back to. Many of the parents were killed however so she helped those children be put in a safe foster home or adopted by loving families. The parents that had survived were able to re-unite with their children.

Unfortunately, Irena was eventually caught. Her punishment included having both of her legs and arms broken and was beaten severely by the Nazi soldiers.

In 2007 Irena was a nominee to win the Nobel Peace Prize. She was not selected for it. Al Gore had won the prize for a slide show on Global Warming.

Now I’m all for Al Gore’s movement to become a greener country and pay attention to our CO2 emissions but I really believe that Irena deserved that prize over him. It’s people like that in this world that we need more of. It’s people like that who should always be rewarded for their selfless acts.