Righteous and Unrighteous

Mother Ricarda Beauchamp Hambrough, Roman Catholic nun from Brighton who, during Nazi occupation, helped hide 60 Jews in her Casa di San Brigida convent in Rome.

Rose to Abbess, and died in 1966 aged 79. There are petitions to have her made a saint.

Sister Anthony (aka Maria Antoniazzi), from Lancashire and also at the Bridgettine convent.

Died in 1990, but had been made a Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.

Monsignor Hugo O’Flaherty who orchestrated the events which Hambrough and Antoniazzi participated in, and others.

Died in 1963, and played by Gregory Peck in 1983 film, The Scarlet and the Black.

Irena Sendler, Polish nurse and social worker who, with the Zegota, hid almost three thousand Jewish children from the occupying Nazis and Polish antisemites.

With Irena Schultz, a German citizen who was aware of the Nazis’ intentions (anyone with photographs?), she secured access to the Warsaw Ghetto with forged identification. Training a dog to bark whenever she entered and left, she carried small children out in a toolbox and larger children in a sack. Eventually caught, and beaten by Nazi guards until both her legs and one arm broke.

Did not reveal the false identities she had arranged for the rescued children, details of which she had hidden in a jar buried in her garden.

Died in 2008, aged 98, after loosing out on the Nobel Peace Prize to someone who was once US Vice-President and lost a Presidential election.

Now played by Anna Paquin in The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler, an American TVM production. Has posthumously been awarded the 2009 Audrey Hepburn Humanitarian Award.

Does not change the absolute fucking disgrace of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

Miep Gies, co-owner of the Achterhuis in which Anne Frank and her family hid between July 1942 and August 1944.

Still living.

Nicholas Winton, London stockbroker who arranged the Czech kindertransport in August 1939. Seven hundred Jewish children were saved, resulting in five thousand descendents.

Still living.

Unidentified racist filth at Downing Street, August 2009.

Sadly still living.

UPDATE 28/8 – I am noticing a large spike of traffic following Googles for Irena Sendler and related criteria, including over one hundred on Saturday. Wow! Feel free to leave comments.

The Best and Worst of Lancashire

There have been many questionable Nobel Peace Prize Laureates, but one which really sticks in my throat is the 2007 Laureate, Al Gore. One of the inconvenient truths about this is that a failed nominee that year was Irena Sendler, the last surviving member of the Zegota: part of the Polish underground in WWII which successfully sheltered thousands of Jewish children and others from the Nazis.

Irena Sendler

At 97 years of age, this was surely to be the last chance to publically acknowledge a woman who insisted “we are not heroes. I continue to have qualms of conscience that I did so little”. She remained largely unknown until her death the next year, and the prize went to Al Gore.

What directed my mind down this path was reading of the actions of two English nuns in Nazi-occupied Rome, and their roles in the sheltering of many dozens of Jews in their convent. There is a bid to canonize one, Mother Ricarda Beauchamp Hambrough (also discussed at Roman Catholic Vocations). Her countrywoman, Sister Anthony (née Maria Antoniazzi), who has been made one of the 14 British Righteous Among the Nations by the Yad Vashem in Jerusalem; just as Sendler was.

In the rambling stream of consciousness which is my mind, this took me back to a missive in which I discussed Cllr. Salim Mulla of Blackburn and Darwen who has been linked to Jew-baiting e-mails sent by a number of, now dismissed or reprimanded Lancashire County Council employees.

Because Sister Anthony was from Lancashire.

[To be continued...]