As media do a victory lap over Friday's Nobel Peace Prize announcement, it seems a metaphysical certitude that few Americans are aware of the other 180 nominees for the award besides the Global Warmingist-in-Chief Al Gore.
For instance, meet Irena Sendler, a 97-year-old Polish woman who saved 2,500 Jewish children from certain death in the Warsaw ghetto during World War II.
Hadn't heard of her? Well, don't feel bad, for since the Nobel Committee announced the nominees in February, there have only been 107 reports about Mrs. Sendler being one of them. By contrast, Al Gore and "Nobel" have been mentioned in 2,912.
To put an even finer point on the astounding difference in media coverage, since the nominees were announced, Mrs. Sendler has been referred to in only six newscasts on television and radio, one by conservative Glenn Beck. Gore's Nobel nomination was discussed in 249!
With that in mind, here is Sendler's story - as presented by the Irena Sendler Project, the fabulous brainchild of some students in rural Kansas - which media have deplorably chosen to boycott in favor of championing a wealthy American liberal who made a movie containing egregious scientific falsehoods (h/t NBer mattm):
Irena Sendler, born in 1910, was raised by her Catholic parents to respect and love people regardless of their ethnicity or social status. Her father, a physician, died from typhus that he contracted during an epidemic in 1917. He was the only doctor in his town near Warsaw who would treat the poor, mostly Jewish victims of this tragic disease. As he was dying, he told 7-year-old Irena, "If you see someone drowning you must try to rescue them, even if you cannot swim." In 1939 the Nazis swept through Poland and imprisoned the Jews in ghettos where they were first starved to death and then systematically murdered in killing camps. Irena, by than a social worker in Warsaw, saw the Jewish people drowning and resolved to do what she could to rescue as many as possible, especially the children. Working with a network of other social workers and brave Poles, mostly women, she smuggled 2,500 children out of the Warsaw ghetto and hid them safely until the end of the war. Sendler took great risks - obtaining forged papers for the children, disguising herself as an infection control nurse, diverting German occupation funds for the support of children in hiding. She entered the Warsaw ghetto, sometimes two and three times a day, and talked Jewish parents into giving up their children. Sendler drugged the babies with sedatives and smuggled them past Nazi guards in gunny sacks, boxes and coffins. She helped the older ones escape through the sewers, through secret openings in the wall, through the courthouse, through churches, any clever way she and her network could evade the Nazis. Once outside the ghetto walls, Sendler gave the children false names and documents and placed them in convents, orphanages and with Polish families. In 1942 the Polish underground organization ZEGOTA recruited her to lead their Children's Division, providing her with money and support. Her hope was that after the war she could reunite the children with surviving relatives, or at least return their Jewish identities. To that end she kept thin tissue paper lists of each child's Jewish name, their Polish name and address. She hid the precious lists in glass jars buried under an apple tree in the back yard of one of her co-conspirators. In 1943 Irena Sendler was arrested, tortured and sentenced to death by firing squad. She never divulged the location of the lists or her Polish underground contacts. At the last moment she was saved by ZEGOTA which bribed a guard to secure her freedom. She still bears the scars and disability of her torture.
God bless you, Irena. For all I know, you saved one of my relatives.
As a post script, I wanted to point out some of the major media outlets in our nation that boycotted her nomination. A search of LexisNexis identified the following: The New York Times; USA Today; The Los Angeles Times; The Chicago Tribune; The San Francisco Chronicle; The Miami Herald; CNN (Beck's report was on CNN Headline News); MSNBC; CBS; Fox News (only Prime Time broadcasts and Fox News Sunday are transcribed).
Obviously, there are many more that ignored Sendler. In fact, as I analyze this further, most of the 107 reports were from foreign media sources, not American ones.
Why might that be?
Please also see Rich Noyes's report concerning media coverage of Gore's coronation.
*****Update: Please see Terry Trippany's great March article about Irena for more information.
