I'm No Hero

It takes a special kind of courage to stand up for what is right when it endangers your life.

clipped from www.guardian.co.uk Irena Sendlerowa, 97, who has been nominated for this year's Nobel peace prize, changed the identity of the children she rescued from the Warsaw ghetto in 1942 and 1943 and placed them with Polish families. She noted the names of the children on cigarette papers, twice for security, and sealed them in two glass bottles, which she buried in a colleague's garden. Yesterday at a special session in Poland's upper house of parliament, members unanimously approved the resolution to honour Mrs Sendlerowa for rescuing "the most defenceless victims of the Nazi ideology - the Jewish children". President Lech Kaczynski said she was a "great hero who can be justly named for the Nobel peace prize". But Mrs Sendlerowa, who is in a Warsaw nursing home, insisted she did nothing special. "The term 'hero' irritates me greatly. The opposite is true. I continue to have pangs of conscience that I did so little."