Out of Poland, into the fire
La Canada filmmaker John Kent Harrison was in Gdansk the week before last for a screening of his "The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler," the Anna Paquin-starring flick about the woman who saved thousands of kids in the Warsaw ghetto in the war. Shown on CBS here last spring, it's been turned into a feature for Polish theaters, and Harrison was presented with a commendation from the Polish president at a ceremony marking the German invasion of 60 years ago this month.
He returned home this week to find that the Station Fire had just spared his Alta Canyada neighborhood, and hiked up into the hills to take this shot.
Comments
Larry Wilson,
In writing this little blog post, you should have provided your reading audience a little more info about how heroic Irena Sendler was, in order to pique their interest in actually seeing the Hallmark Hall of Fame film upon its release to DVD.
What is so profound, is that Irena (1910-2008) was a devout Catholic whom risked certain execution in order to actively save thousands of Jewish children in the Warsaw ghettos from inevitable Nazi persecution.
Here is a link to the wikipedia entry about this Catholic hero.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irena_Sendler
In 2007, she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, however, the international panel decided that Al Gore was more deserving, instead.
Yesterday, French President Sarkozy announced that all of his intelligence agencies have said with absolute certaintly that Iran is actively pursuing a nuclear bomb.
The lesson to extract from the Warsaw ghetto is that if Europe's leaders had been more aggressive in thwarting Hitler in the first place, the Warsaw ghetto would likely have not come to fruition.
Let's not repeat the same mistake.
In 2009, we all have an opportunity to work to put an end to Iran's active nuclear program, disabling the Mullahs from wiping Israel off the map, as they have promised to do.
Posted by: Learning From History | September 16, 2009 7:55 PM
In September 1939, Hitler's national socialist party invaded Poland.
Now, exactly seventy years later, Barack Obama has casually informed Poland that he is lifting the missile defense system which exists to protect Poland, Czech Republic, and other eastern European allies in case of an attack by Russia.
Now, many eastern European nations are very angry with the USA---and that is a bad thing, isn't it ?
I had been suckered into believing that Obama was going to make other countries like us.
Posted by: Donna The Kissing Bandit | September 20, 2009 7:36 PM