The prize doesn’t always go to the most deserving.
Irena Sendler. Died 12 May 2008 (aged 98); Warsaw, Poland.
During WWII, Irena, got permission to work in the Warsaw ghetto, as a plumbing/sewer specialist. She had an ‘ulterior motive.’
She knew what the Nazi’s plans were for the German Jews.
Irena smuggled infants out in the bottom of the tool box she carried and she had a burlap sack hidden there for larger children whom she carried out over her shoulder. She also had a dog she trained to bark when 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 covered the infants’ noises.
During her time of doing this, she managed to smuggle out and save 2500 children/infants.
She was caught, and the Nazi’s broke both her legs, her arms and beat her severely; yet she survived.
Irena kept a careful record of the names of all the kids she smuggled out and kept them in a glass jar, buried under a tree in her back yard.
After the war, she tried to locate any parents that may have survived and reunite them with family. Most had been murdered in the voracious Nazi gas chambers. Those orphaned children she had helped got placed in foster family homes or adopted.
Last year Irena was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. She was not selected.
President Obama won the coveted award one year before becoming President for his work as a community organizer for ACORN, and Al Gore won also — for a slide show on Global Warming.
