Her name was Irena Sendler. She was a Polish lady living in Warsaw when World War II came.

During the war, Irena got permission to work in the Warsaw ghetto, as a plumbing/sewer specialist. She had an ulterior motive. She smuggled out Jewish infants  in the bottom of the tool box she carried. She also carried a burlap sack in the back of her truck, for larger kids.

Irena kept with her a dog whom she trained to bark whenever the Nazi soldiers let her
in and out of the ghetto. The soldiers, of course, wanted nothing to do with the dog and the barking masked the kids’/infants’ noises.

During her time of doing this, she managed to smuggle out and save 2,500 children of various ages. Ultimately, she was caught. The Nazis broke both of her legs and arms and beat her severely. But she survived.

Irena kept a record of the names of all the kids she had smuggled out in a glass jar which she buried under a tree in her back yard. After the war, she tried to locate any parents that may have survived and tried to reunite the families. Most of the parents had been gassed. She helped to place the orphaned children into foster family homes or to have them adopted.

In 2007, Irena was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. She was not selected. She died in Warsaw a year later, at the age of 98–one of the great heroines of World War II. What were the Nobel selectors thinking?