A few days ago we got the news that President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. A very good man, a client, and a dear friend of ours Bruce Watson sent me an e-mail reminding me about last year Nobel Peace Prize.

Al Gore won it. The runner up was Irena Sendler. She did not win the prize, she did not have the name recognition and she did not have a slide show like our former VP.

But who deserves recognition more than Irena Sendler? Not for what she might do, or not for how she presents herself, as she does not shine in this department, but for what she HAS ACTUALLY DONE. risking her life, and nearly losing it...

Irena Sendler was a member of Zegota, the  Polish rescue organization, who risked their lives rescuing 2,500 Jewish Children from the Warsaw Ghetto and hiding them with Christian families. She buried jars with their real and assumed names in the garden, so that they could one day learn who their biological families were.

It was very risky, they had to sedate smaller children. Bigger kids were often rescued in highly timed operations, when the kid would be waiting for the guard to reach certain point, then rush to the middle of the road to the sewage well, and the cover would open for short seconds to let the kid in. You are late seconds, you dead.

Irena was not doing it alone. She assembled a group of women helping her. And this was in Poland, the only country where not only people, helping Jews, but even their neighbors were to be punished.

Irena was finally caught by Nazi in 1943, was tortured but did not give up those who worked with her, nor the lists of kids she hid in the garden. Think about that, a small young woman was stronger than the executioners. They broke her feet, legs, arms, beaten her severely... She lost the consciousness, but she did  not betrayed. Her friends bribed the guards, they put her name in the list of executed and got her out.

She tried to unite kids with their parents, but few parents were left there. They were gassed. Children were adopted by Polish families, many went to Israel, which has Irena's name in Yad Vashem

She died quietly in May 12, 2008 in Warsaw at the age of 98. Watch the video. Read the subtitles if you do not understand Polish. The words are so powerful...

Now she went to God. And she’ll ask God: God, where were you in the time of Holocaust?” And God will answer her: “I was in your heart.”

I do not understand Polish well, just some spots. But when he said "God, where were you..." I understood every word, it sounded like in Russian, and the words scarred me right across my heart...

So, do we know who the runner up was this year? Maybe someone who actually did something?

Image is courtesy of Flickr