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Poland, Israel, US mark Holocaust Remembrance Day

PR dla Zagranicy
Victoria Bieniek 11.04.2018 08:30
Poland, Israel and the US on Wednesday mark Holocaust Remembrance Day with a ceremony at the US state department.
Irena Sendler, pictured in 2005. Photo: Mariusz Kubik/Wikimedia Commons (CC-BY-SA-3.0)Irena Sendler, pictured in 2005. Photo: Mariusz Kubik/Wikimedia Commons (CC-BY-SA-3.0)

The ceremony will feature a lesson about Irena Sendler, a Polish social worker who risked her life by coordinating a network that saved a large number of Jewish children from the Holocaust in German Nazi-occupied Warsaw.

Attendees at the US state department will also hear a speech from Zygmunt Rolat, a Polish-Jewish philanthropist who lives in the US and who has dedicated himself to promoting the memory of Irena Sendler, and see a film about the Polish woman directed by Poland's Andrzej Wolf.

Irena Sendler saved, according to various estimates, from several hundred to 2,500 children by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto and finding Christian families and monasteries to take care of them.

In 1965, Irena Sendler was recognised by the Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem as one of the “Righteous Among the Nations”. She died in 2008 at the age of 98.

Holocaust Remembrance Day observances in the US have been organised by the US state department and the Polish and Israeli embassies in the US.

Commemorations will also honour the 75th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

The Israeli Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day, known as Yom HaShoah, commemorates the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust during World War II. (vb/pk)

Source: IAR

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