By Michael Sudhalter
Through the unimaginable tragedy of six million Jews killed in the Holocaust, there are also stories of ordinary people becoming extraordinary heroes.
Anna Salton Eisen, an author and co-founder of Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, spoke about two such women during the Yom HaShoah Memorial Service on April 13 in the CBI sanctuary. The 90-minute program, featuring an hourlong service and Eisen’s half-hour presentation, was sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Fort Worth & Tarrant County.
The program was titled “Rescue and Return: Women in the Underground Who Saved Jewish Children in the Holocaust.”
“We remember those who perished — individuals, families, whole villages and towns across so many countries in Europe,” Eisen said. “There’s also room to remember those who lived with resilience, courage and determination.”
Eisen has shared her family’s Holocaust history through her writing, including “The 23rd Psalm: A Holocaust Memoir,” written by her father, George Salton, with her, and her own book, “Pillar of Salt: A Daughter’s Life in the Shadow of the Holocaust,” about her mother’s experience.
On April 13, Eisen focused on the story of her mother, the late Ruth Salton, a Jewish woman born in a small Polish town in 1927, and Irena Sendler, a Polish Catholic social worker born in 1910.
Both Salton and Sendler were living in Warsaw shortly before the Nazis invaded and occupied Poland. Salton was living with an aunt in the capital city, while Sendler was studying social work at the University of Warsaw.
Before the invasion, university rules required Jews and Poles to have their identity stamped on student identification badges, and Jewish students were forced to sit in the back of classrooms.
Sendler crossed off her identification and sat with the Jewish students. She was suspended for doing so and did not receive her degree for another three years.
Still, she stood ready to help.
“The Nazis forced the Jews to build a 10-foot wall around the Warsaw Ghetto,” Eisen said. “It was crowded with nearly 400,000 Jews. There was deprivation, hardship and sickness.”
Sendler brought food, medication and clothing into the ghetto, to help residents survive.
Eventually, Eisen said, it became clear that children had to leave — whether hidden in trucks, potato sacks or even carried through the sewers — to be placed in hospitals, convents or private homes.
Eisen described how some parents, facing deportation, made the agonizing decision to entrust their children to others.
“Those who saved the children were courageous and committed,” she said.
Sendler smuggled approximately 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto, saving them from certain death. She was arrested and scheduled to be executed, but was released after a guard was bribed. She died in 2008 at age 98.
After the war, Salton became part of the Bricha movement — a group that worked to reunite Jewish orphans from Poland with surviving family members, if any could be found.
Years later, Eisen recalled, one of those children approached her mother in Israel.
“You were the one who found me. I’ll never forget you,” the person told her.
Sendler created lists documenting the children who had been hidden, placing them in glass jars and burying them under apple trees. After the war, members of Bricha were able to recover some of those records.
Even after the war, Poland remained dangerous, with pogroms continuing into 1946. Once children were reunited with relatives, a Jewish organization called Zegota helped place them in displaced persons camps, where they could later relocate to Israel or the United States.
Sendler was later recognized as Righteous Among the Nations at Yad Vashem and was nominated for a Nobel Prize.
Eisen said she remains moved by her mother’s courage.
“She could still find meaning and purpose after the Holocaust,” Eisen said. “She put all of her dreams and future on hold to help find these children.”
A Dallas-area Yom HaShoah observance was held April 12 at the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum.
