A Tribute to
So, Anna
you go skipping over the afternoon bright with sun filling the air with laughter your hair feathering in the wind. Years from now we will sit down I will tell you how you came to us from the heart of your brave mother who loved you so much she gave you to us. From the heart of Irena whose love was strong. Irena whose arms and legs were broken for her cause, the preservation of children like you herded like cattle into the poverty and disease of the Warsaw ghetto. You, my daughter, were born there. Anna Irena, my beautiful child an infant hidden in the bottom of a toolbox wrapped in the softness of your mother's shawl giving the only warmth she knew to you sweetly sleeping as if you knew this was the time for stillness, of secrets for this smuggling to safety. Anna , your true identity lives in a glass jar buried beneath an apple tree in the backyard of a friend. Irena meant to bring you home again return you to your family when the horror of war was over. So many names lived secretly in little glass jars buried with care. Over two thousand Jewish children spared certain death because she dared to interfere with the atrocities living there. She endured such torture, demanded that she give names of those who aided her, she passed out time and again with pain never once uttered a name or the secret of glass jars. God rewarded her caused a rising up of her comrades who bribed a guard to list her among the dead then they hid her, much like she hid you little one, kept her safe until the war was done. In later years the glass jars were unearthed she diligently sought parents who gave each child birth. Most families died at Treblinka Extermination Camp. Irena cried for them. Irena Sendler, call her name a hope of freedom. She cried for the children. When it mattered most she breathed for them. poem by © Doris C. Swearingen My thanks to Dee for allowing me to use her poem for more information on Irene please click the link below: Irene If you would like to be informed when new poems are posted on this site - please sign in below. |