Nobel Peace Prize

[aap1966]

Let me tell you a story about Irena Spendler. Long, but stick with it.

Under Nazi occupation the Jews of Warsaw were herded into the city ghetto: four square kilometres for around 400,000 souls. Even before the deportations to the death camps started, death could be arbitrary and instant. Yet a paradox created a sliver of hope. Squalor and near-starvation (the monthly bread ration was two kilos, or 4.5lb) created ideal conditions for typhus, which would have killed Germans too. So the Nazis allowed Mrs Sendler in and out of the tightly guarded ghetto to distribute medicines and vaccinations.
That bureaucratic loophole allowed her to save more Jews than the far better known Oscar Schindler. It was astonishingly risky. Some children could be smuggled out in lorries, or in trams supposedly returning empty to the depot. More often they went by secret passageways from buildings on the outskirts of the ghetto. To save one Jew, she reckoned, required 12 outsiders working in total secrecy: drivers for the vehicles; priests to issue false baptism certificates; bureaucrats to provide ration cards; and most of all, families or religious orders to care for them. The penalty for helping Jews was instant execution.
To make matters even riskier, Mrs Sendler insisted on recording the children's details to help them trace their families later. These were written on pieces of tissue paper bundled on her bedside table; the plan was to hurl them out of the window if the Gestapo called. The Nazis did catch her (thinking she was a small cog, not the linchpin of the rescue scheme) but did not find the files, secreted in a friend's armpit. Under torture she revealed nothing. Thanks to a well-placed bribe, she escaped execution; the children's files were buried in glass jars. Mrs Sendler spent the rest of the war under an assumed name.
Far from being honoured, she narrowly avoided a death sentence from the Communist authorities. Her crime was that her work had been authorised and financed by the Polish government-in-exile in London, which was later reviled as an imperialist stooge.
In 1948 repeated interrogations by the secret police in late pregnancy cost the life of her second child, born prematurely.
She was not allowed to travel, and her children could not study full-time at university. “What sins have you got on your conscience, Mama?” her daughter asked her.

In 2007 she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, but a far more worthy candidate won.

Al Gore.
For a slide show.
About Global warming.

[m21sniper]

But Al Gore invented the internet.

[Mule]

And global warming!

[Seahawk]

I am such an @ss I did some digging on Irena.

Wow. Do yourself a favor and read a little about her, then read this:

"The term 'hero' irritates me greatly. The opposite is true. I continue to have pangs of conscience that I did so little," Sendler said in one of her last interviews.

aap, thank you. Pangs...we should all be so lucky.

[MRM]

Did you mean 2007, not 1997?

Also read up on Raul Walenberg. Such heros. When I am called into account for being a human - the species of such monsters as Stalin, Hilter and Mao, I will say in my defense that my species also contains such people as Madam Spengler and Raul Walenberg.

[Mule]

She's certainly no Algore though, you must admit!

[aap1966]

You're right.
She risked her life to save the lives of strangers.
He risked jet-lag to enhance his Messiah Complex.

[Joeaksa]

She is a real hero in Europe. Al Gore is a worthless A$$ and eventually will be found out.

[mike55]

she lived an amazing story.

on pbs a couple months back, i saw a program about rudolph vrba. he and alfred wetzler escaped from auschwitz to alert the world about what was really going on in the camps.

as it turns out, he settled here in vancouver and became a prof at UBC. he died a few years back. it was quite the story too.

[john70t]

Not to diminish her actions(both selfless and heroic).... doesn't the Peace Prize have more to do with the greater influence on humanity's present continuation and focus?


1)Her actions affected those of a few thousand or so(that are currently aware of it), but they were not altogether uncommon nor unique during those times of war.
2)Moreover, her actions were focused for the benefit of a select group, not all of humanity.


If you don't understand #2, you are Israeli, not American.

[aap1966]

Originally Posted by john70t

Not to diminish her actions(both selfless and heroic).... doesn't the Peace Prize have more to do with the greater influence on humanity's present continuation and focus?

1)Her actions affected those of a few thousand or so (that are currently aware of it), but they were not altogether uncommon nor unique during those times of war.
2)Moreover, her actions were focused for the benefit of a select group, not all of humanity.
If you don't understand #2, you are Israeli, not American.

With respect.....,
1) I would submit that her actions were uncommon. Individual acts of heroism are not uncommon during war, but such sustained heroism over such a long period for such complete strangers at such a high risk of capture, torture and death is, I feel, hereoism of another magnitude.
2) When one displays such selfless acts for one group, does it not grace all of humanity?

By the way, I'm not a Jew, an Israeli or even an American.

[sammyg2]

The nobel peace prize is a total joke.
They gave one to Al Gore, who needs no punch line. He is the joke.
They gave one to Jiminy Carter, the worst president we've ever seen.
They gave one to Yassir Arafat, a self-described terrorist responsible for the deaths of countless Israelis.
They gave one to Nelson mandella, take a good look at south africa now. Aparteid really worked out well, didn't it? Lawlessness, burning people alive in the streets. Much better now.
They gave one to amnesty international, which is the only group I can think of that is worse than the ACLU or greenpeace. They support political terrorism groups.
They gave one to Martin Luther King jr, a plagiarist, con man, and extortionist.

[Mule]

Nelson Mandela's govt make apartheid look like a great system.

[Tobra]

Originally Posted by john70t

Not to diminish her actions(both selfless and heroic).... doesn't the Peace Prize have more to do with the greater influence on humanity's present continuation and focus?


1)Her actions affected those of a few thousand or so(that are currently aware of it), but they were not altogether uncommon nor unique during those times of war.
2)Moreover, her actions were focused for the benefit of a select group, not all of humanity.


If you don't understand #2, you are Israeli, not American.

1)The thousands she saved, their children, their grandchildren and everyone they knew were impacted by this woman's actions. She deserved one a lot more that Arafat or Carter without question.

2)If you don't think Mr Gore has stronger motivation than to help humanity, I have some prime swampland in Florida and a bridge in Brooklyn you might be interested in purchasing.