WARSAW, Poland (AP) The Polish government and an American foundation are honoring a U.S. educator who together with his high school students made the world aware of Irena Sendler, a Polish woman who saved the lives of hundreds of Jewish children during the Holocaust.
Sendler, a social worker and member of the wartime Polish resistance, risked her life to smuggle Jewish children out of Warsaws ghetto and even under torture by the Germans refused to reveal the identities of those she saved.
Her story was largely unknown until Kansas history teacher Norman Conard and his students began producing a play about her in 1999.
Polands Culture Ministry and the San Francisco-based Taube Philanthropies are presenting Conard with the 2018 Irena Sendler Memorial Award today in Warsaw.
Sendler died in 2008 at age 98.
