By Andra Bryan Stefanoni
news@joplinglobe.com
FORT SCOTT, Kan. — The work of a Catholic woman who saved Jewish children during World War II was brought to life a decade ago by four Uniontown High School students, earning them national recognition and her a Nobel Peace Prize nomination.
Irena Sendler’s story will be told on national television in a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie, “The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler,” to air on CBS at 8 p.m. today.
The film stars Anna Paquin (“The Piano”) as Sendler, a Polish social worker few had ever heard of before the students discovering her name in a box of clippings their history teacher, Norm Konard, had set aside as reference.
The students were fishing for material for a Kansas History Day project. Megan Felt was one of those students, and said that while they knew right away they wanted Sendler’s story to be told, they had no idea the story would grow to the magnitude it has.
In the early 1940s, Sendler created and led a conspiracy of women who moved in and out of Warsaw’s Jewish Ghetto disguised as nurses. In doing so, they rescued 2,500 Jewish children from deportation to death camps, sometimes sedating them and hiding them inside trunks and suitcases. Sendler provided them false documents, and found them shelter in individual and group children’s homes on “the outside.”
In order to preserve their identities, she wrote their birth names on scraps of paper which she placed in a jar and buried.
In 1943, the Nazis discovered Sendler’s mission, arrested her, tortured her, and arranged for her execution. She was rescued, and lived to be 98.
The students created a play based on the story, and since then have presented it hundreds of times across the nation, gaining worldwide media attention. They traveled to Poland four times to meet with Sendler, most recently in 2008 — just nine days before her death, which happened to be on Felt’s birthday.
“She had become like a grandmother to us,” Felt said of the connection Sendler had with the students.
When they learned Hallmark had plans for a movie, the students were at once both excited and anxious that an accurate story of Sendler be told. They traveled to Los Angeles last week to see the premier, and met Paquin and Goran Visnjic (“E.R.”), who portrays Stefan, Sendler’s love interest.
On Wednesday, the students attended sold-out showings of the movie at the Liberty Theater in Fort Scott.
“It’s been surreal,” Felt said after the premier. “Our concern was that the true spirit of Irena Sendler be shown and her story be shown in the correct manner and light,” Felt said after the premier. “It was very well done, showing her true spirit, and good triumphing over evil, always doing what you believe in.”
Felt, who plays Sendler in “Life in a Jar,” said Paquin did a wonderful job at a difficult role, and portrayed the kind of courage and emotion Felt thought Sendler would have felt.
In addition to Felt, 13 other current and past cast members of “Life in a Jar” attended the showing, as did Renata Zajdman, who was saved at the age of 11 by Sendler and traveled from Montreal to see the premier.
“Life in a Jar” cast member Jamie Walker said she experienced “anxiousness and anticipation to see the project come full circle, and our goal and successes come to fruition.”
For Felt and Walker, as well as Konard, the story doesn’t end with the movie that airs today. A grant that Konard submitted to the Milken Foundation in 2007 was successfully funded by the L.A.-based philanthropic organization, which he used to open the Lowell Milken Center for Teaching Respect and Understanding based in Fort Scott.
Walker serves as its director of development, seeking funding to support programming. Felt serves as its program director, working closely with students and teachers around the world to develop projects just like “Life in a Jar” — projects that bring to life the people she calls unsung heroes.
The two said they always will feel a deep connection to Sendler, but, Felt added, “there are 33 pages of lists of unsung heroes whose stories need to be told” — many of them coming from the box of clippings Konard started.
More
Read more about “Life in a Jar” at www.irenasendler.org or the Lowell Milken Center at www.lowellmilkencenter.org.
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