IRENA SENDLER STATUE OFFICIALLY UNVEILED IN NEWARK
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OLISH humanitarian hero Irena Sendler had her statue officially unveiled at Newark’s Fountain Gardens on London Road after a small COVID-secure ceremony on Saturday 26 June 2021. Although few people in the UK have heard of Irena, her story is one of monumental importance and one that Newark and Sherwood District Council, Newark Town Council and the Polish Cultural Institute in London want to share widely to ensure that her life becomes a legacy that will never be forgotten. During World War II Irena Sendler worked at the Department for Social Welfare and Public Health of the City of Warsaw, Germanoccupied Poland. During her time there she worked tirelessly to help protect and rescue many Jewish children and their families. She was part of a network of workers and volunteers from that department, mostly women, who smuggled Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto. She would provide them with false identity documents and shelter them with willing Polish families or in orphanages and other care facilities, including Catholic nun convents, saving those children from the Holocaust. The German occupiers suspected Irena's involvement in this Polish Underground movement and in October 1943 she was arrested by the Gestapo. However, she managed to hide the list of the names and locations of all the rescued Jewish children, thus preventing this information
