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It started out as a high school history project. It ended up changing our lives.
By Megan Felt
Farlington, Kansas

Once, I wanted to be a pharmacist when I grew up. I saw myself behind the drugstore counter in my small Kansas town, helping people like my mom, who was diagnosed with cancer my freshman year of high school. I would’ve done it except for something else that happened that year—something that changed my life. At a time when death and loss seemed about to claim my family, I found out about a woman who had fought, and sometimes cheated, death with a courage that still rings like a clarion. The world had long ago forgotten her. But the moment I read her story, I realized even a small light can shine in the darkness and not be overcome. She helped me find my own light. And she taught me that anyone, even a farm girl from Kansas, can live a life wider than the biggest, bluest prairie sky.

It all started with a history project, one activity I didn’t drop when Mom got sick. At the beginning of the year at Uniontown High School, three friends and I—Elizabeth Cambers, Sabrina Coons and Jessica Shelton—signed up for National History Day, a contest in which more than half a million students compete to create the most compelling presentation of a historical topic. We made our project a one-act play about the Holocaust, mostly because we liked the idea of learning about a time and place so far from our own. I’d spent my whole life on the farm, where my parents grew corn, beans and wheat and ran about 300 head of cattle. As far as we knew, no Jewish person had ever attended Uniontown. It was a small school. There were only 29 kids in our graduating class.

We asked one of Uniontown’s history teachers, Norm Conard, to help us find an actual person to research. Mr. Conard was the school’s National History Day coordinator—and a big reason I hadn’t pulled out of the contest. He was one of those teachers who can get students excited about anything. His classroom was big and airy, with murals on the walls and kids always hanging around, talking history. Leafing through a stack of old newspaper and magazine clippings he gave us, we came across an article from U.S.News & World Report. “The Other Schindlers,” it was called, referring to the movie Schindler’s List, about a Polish businessman who helped more than 1,200 Jews avoid death camps. The article described a half dozen people who’d also saved Jews, but never been recognized. One name jumped out: “Irena Sendlerowa. Social Worker. Smuggled more than 2,500 children to safety from the Warsaw Ghetto. To preserve their names, she wrote them on sheets of paper and buried them in jars out in her garden.”

We looked at each other. Twenty-five hundred? That was a thousand more than Oskar Schindler had saved. I tried to picture this woman, the children she’d rescued. How had she gotten them out of the ghetto? Why had she risked her life? “I doubt anyone’s ever heard of her,” Elizabeth said. “She probably died in obscurity. This is going to be a great project.”

But our excitement quickly dimmed. Irena was unknown for a reason. There was no information about her. We combed through books, newspapers, the internet, even went to the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education in Kansas City. Nothing. There was a brief mention on the website of an organization called The Jewish Foundation for the Righteous. But when we wrote to them, their reply was vague.

One afternoon we were working on computers in Mr. Conard’s room when Elizabeth suddenly sat back. “You guys!” she cried. “It’s an e-mail from the Foundation for the Righteous.” We rushed over.

“Dear Ms. Cambers,” the e-mail read, and went on to apologize for taking so long to respond. The next sentence leapt out at us. “If you wish more information about Irena Sendlerowa, we recommend you contact her directly. She is currently 90 years old, living in a small apartment in Warsaw.” Irena was alive! We immediately wrote a letter, e-plaining who we were and enclosing our play, pictures of us and three dollars for return postage. Would she get it? Could she read English? Would she respond?

I needed her to respond. Irena had become one of the few happy things I had to talk about at home, where Mom was sick and Dad worked late getting all the farm chores done. Irena was becoming a beacon for me that needed to stay lit.

A few weeks later a note came to my English class instructing me to report to Mr. Conard’s room. I got there and saw him with Elizabeth, Sabrina and Jessica—holding a letter with a Polish postmark. “Is it…?” I asked.

“It is,” said Elizabeth. We gazed at the envelope, festooned with heart-shaped stickers and addressed in old-fashioned, looping handwriting. We tore it open and…it was written in Polish. We looked despairingly at Mr. Conard. “We’ll find a translator at the University of Kansas,” he said. We faxed the translator the letter and, page by page, it came back to us. We tore the first sheet out of the fax machine.

“To my dear and beloved girls, very close to my heart,” Irena began. And she proceeded to tell us everything—how she’d talked her way into the ghetto on the pretext of checking for typhus, then smuggled babies out in streetcars, wrapping them like parcels. She described her fear, the agony of persuading parents to part with their children, the bittersweet feeling of arranging an adoption. She had assumed she’d die when the Gestapo arrested her in 1943 and fractured her legs and feet during an interrogation. But members of the Polish underground bribed a guard to set her free, and she lived to retrieve the children’s names she had buried in her garden. She tried to reunite them with their parents after the war, but so many had died. She was flattered by our play, but insisted she was no hero. “I did what anyone would have done.” She thanked us for the three dollars, which she gave to a Catholic boys’ home. “I hope you will stay in touch,” she concluded. I read that letter many times, especially those haunting words near the end: “I did what anyone would have done.” Was that true? Would I have done the same thing? How could I, a farm girl with a sick mom who spent most evenings doing dishes and making sure her little brother finished his homework? Irena had blazed out against a horrible darkness. My own life felt pretty dark, especially when Mom came home from chemo. But I didn’t feel very courageous.

With Irena’s letter, we made it to the National History Day finals in College Park, Maryland. We didn’t win, but we did get some coverage in a local Kansas newspaper. Soon, civic organizations were calling, asking us to perform our play, Life in a Jar. We were reluctant at first, until we realized Irena would want us to educate others—and we could use the performances to raise money for her. We took props and traveled to local schools, churches and Rotary clubs, passing a jar for donations. After one performance in Kansas City, a Jewish businessman called. “Would you like to go to Warsaw to meet Irena?” he asked. “I’ll pay your way if you come back and talk to my businessmen’s association about what you find.”

In May 2001 we were on a plane for Warsaw—the other girls, my mom, whose cancer had gone into remission, and me. When we landed, the Polish press mobbed us. An American correspondent for a Polish newspaper had written a story about our trip. Cameramen followed us to an apartment, where Irena, weak from high blood pressure, sat waiting. We walked down a hall, heard a tiny voice and there she was, not five feet tall, calling our names. We ran to her and hugged her, everyone crying. Feeling the frailness of her body, an exhilarating rush came over me. Irena was a hero. But she was also, just as she’d insisted, a person like anyone else. That’s what made her special. Perhaps her acts of goodness were comparatively small—2,500 saved out of six million killed. But here we were, still feeling their effect. If she, by herself, could do so much, why couldn’t I?

Today, nine years later, I'm still asking that question. I didn't end up becoming a pharmacist. I helped found a nonprofit organization instead, one that shows schools how to do what we did at Uniontown.It a vocation I could never aave imagined. But that's what happens when God moves in your life. A light shines in the dark. And nothing is ever the same again.

this had me in tears with out the video....