The Audrey Hepburn Foundation posthumously awarded Irena Sendler with its Humanitarian Award for saving 2500 Jewish children from the Nazi holocaust.

Elzbieta Krajewska reports

Irena Sendler was the daughter of a doctor and herself an active social worker. That gave her entry to the Jewish ghetto, set up in World War II by the Nazis in occupied Warsaw. She smuggled two and a half thousand Jewish children out of the ghetto, placing them with families, at orphanages and convents around Warsaw. Her methods were drastic: the children were put to sleep and removed in body bags. She had a tough time convincing families to part with their young ones - but as it proved, the children were often the only family members left living, when survivors of the Warsaw ghetto perished in the Nazi death camp of Treblinka. The Nazis caught on to Irena Sendler. She was arrested, tortured and sentenced to death. The underground managed to buy her out. She read in official announcements that she had been executed. She then went back to continue what she had been doing.

This Monday, Irena Sendler, who died last year at the age of 98, was posthumously awarded with the Audrey Hepburn Humanitarian Award, at an exhibition devoted to the actress and UNICEF ambassador now on in Berlin. Son of the actress and President of the US-based Audrey Hepburn Foundation, Sean Hepburn Ferrer explained why they chose Irena Sendler. He spoke of the similarities which he saw between the two women. He also said that the exhibition made Berlin the right place for the presentation.

Among others Bob Geldof and Sonny Bono are laureates of the award, launched in 2004 by the Audrey Hepburn Foundation and UNICEF.

The award was received on behalf of Irena Sendler’s family by Poland’s Ambassador to Germany, Marek Prawda, who said it was a symbolic moment when one legendary woman from Warsaw was given an award named after another legendary woman.

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