Educating Myself on Heroics

What is a true hero?

To me a hero does the right thing because it's the right thing to do. Sometimes the person acts quietly without drawing attention to themselves with no accolades or public recognition. They care about their families, neighbors and community. They quietly donate to causes or individuals who need help. The volunteer their time and energy to help someone. 

I've learned a true hero is an ordinary person just doing the right thing, nothing extraordinary. There has been many heroes since time began but during WW2 there was a lot of heroes.

Irena Sendler helped save 2500 children by smuggling them out of the Warsaw ghetto and placing them with Polish families. She kept a record of each child rescued in hopes of reuniting the child with their families after the war. Sadly most of the parents were sent to Treblinka. She  faced death each day but she put her own mortality last to do the right thing by saving innocent children. Her heroism went unnoticed except by those she helped save. Any recognition during WW2 meant certain death for her and those helping by the NAZIS. She was eventually caught and tortured. She was sentenced to death but allowed to escape because Zegota bribed a NAZI . In 1965 she was awarded Righteous Among the Nation's by Yad Yashem.

We never learned of her heroics in our history books. Most of us would of never known of her heroics during the Holocaust,if some high school weren't researching the holocaust  in 1999. They wrote a play " Life in a Jar" about Sendler's activities during WW2.  The students from KS visited Irena in Poland who was living quietly in a nursing home. Irena and the others didn't risk their lives for recognition, awards or accolades. They did it to save friends and strangers from injustice. Irena never considered her actions as heroic.

There is still heroes among us that we see everyday that quietly live their lives without making the front page.  They just choose to do the right thing .