Life in a Jar, the Irena Sendler Project

Norm Conard, Executive Director, Lowell Milken Center: Life in a Jar was probably about the 50th project of its kind at Uniontown High School in southeast Kansas, a small rural high school of about 100 students. And over the years, we had been developing projects of unsung heroes and diversity, and in 1999, 14 years ago, these marvelous young ladies were looking to learn more about the Holocaust, and so they developed a play about a woman that we had seen a little clipping on, and no one knew anything about her, even though her story sounded fantastic. And they began the research, wrote the play, and, lo and behold, found out she was alive in Poland, and so the story just goes from there. There is a Hebrew word called bashert, which means fate, or it's meant to be, and we think that's this whole story, this whole project over the years. 

This was about project-based learning or performance-based learning where students develop a project, develop ownership in it, critical thinking is involved, lots of primary research, and we had had great success with this over the years. And this project sort of becomes the ultimate, as far as its outreach, and as far as the power of what it does, but it allows the teacher to become not so much a teacher or a lecturer, as a facilitator. And so, with these projects, I was a facilitator, and the students develop it. They were the owners. They were, actually, the masterminds behind putting together this performance.

Megan Felt, Program Director, Lowell Milken Center: Growing up in Uniontown, Mr. Conard's name, Norm Conard, was well-known throughout all of the students, all of the schools, all of the parents. You heard about his projects and the National History Day competition. I remember that day, my freshman year at the beginning of school, everyone in the whole high school went into his classroom at some period, and you heard about National History Day, you heard from older students who competed, and I signed up for group performance.

Sabrina Murphy, Kansas State University graduate: And I was actually new to the school. I just moved there for that beginning of the school year, and I didn't really know anybody. And I remember Mr. Conard coming up to me and asking me if I wanted to do this and be a part of this group for National History Day.

Megan Felt: And I remember Liz coming to me and saying, "Hey, I'm putting together this group. Would you want to be a part of the group?" So, I was so excited and then we talked, and we all decided we wanted to learn more about the Holocaust. And we asked Mr. Conard, "Do you have any ideas, direction for us?" And he gave us this box of clippings, and he said, "Here, take a look. See if you find anything in here that interests you."

Sabrina Murphy: We'd actually found in a magazine article in News and World Report of other Sendlers, and there was little paragraphs of other women or people that had done different things, and there was a paragraph on Irena Sendler that said she saved 2,500 children from the Warsaw Ghetto. And when we first read that, we all immediately thought it was a typo. We were like, "There's no way. How could you save these many people and not...?" I've never heard of her.

Norm Conard: As they began to develop this project, there were times where we thought, "There's just nothing about this woman to be found." And because of communism in Poland all these years, she was not known. She was not even  mentioned in the paper, but using the internet, they began to find piece by piece this story.

Megan Felt: And we typed in her name. There was one website that came up. It was the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, and they confirmed she had saved 2,500. It just had a few more paragraphs on her, and that was it. There was nothing else on the internet about her. So, we started researching the Warsaw Ghetto, World War II, the Holocaust, other rescuers stories, children that she saved, but there was really not any information out there. So, we finally decide to write the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous an email saying, "Here's what we've got. Can you help us?" So, I'll never forget the day we met together, and they said, "We got an email. She's still alive. She lives in Warsaw. Here's her address." We were ecstatic. This woman had become our hero at this point. So, immediately, we sat down, we wrote a letter, we sent a copy of our script that we put together. We sent pictures of us and money for her to send a letter back to us.

So, I'll never forget the day, in February, that Liz came running down the hallway shouting, "We got a letter," waving in the air, and we all ran back into Mr. Conard's classroom. And the very first line said, "To my dear and beloved girls very close to my heart." She was so warm and willing to share her story. She told us in that first letter she has nightmares every night of her life wondering, "Did I do enough? Could I have done more?" She started sharing with us how she brought children out. She would take children from the Warsaw Ghetto, talk parents out, promise she would put them in a Polish Catholic home, in an orphanage, in a convent, some place to take care and hide the children. And her goal all along was to reunite the children with the families after the war. So, when she would take the children out of the Warsaw Ghetto, she would write down their Jewish names, their Jewish parents' names, their new Christian names, their age, and where they were replaced, which she put into jars and buried under an apple tree right across the street from the German barracks. So, all 2,500 of the names, or as many as she could get in these 2 jars were under their noses the whole time, and they had no idea. Just an amazing story. I forgot to mention the money that we sent for Irena to send a letter back to us. We got a receipt in that first letter. She'd given the money to a boy's home. And that just describes Irena to the very end, always giving everything she had to take care of those around her.

Norm Conard: The first trip, we went to a middle school in Kansas City to present the play "Life in a Jar," and a Jewish gentleman saw us there, wanted to have lunch with us, and he asked what we were doing because we told him we wanted to go back to Poland to see our hero. And Megan or someone said, "We're selling candy bars," and I believe he said, "How much have you raised?" And they said something like $75. And, of course, so that was a big laugh. And he began raising money that night, and I believe within 48 hours had raised enough for us to go to Poland.

Megan Felt: And he called and said, "Here's the money." He said, "You can go to Poland, but you have to come back to our synagogue, September 12th, 2001 and present." So, we made the agreement, "Okay, we'll go to Poland, and September 12th, we'll come present at your synagogue." So, the four of us are the students, and Mr. Conard, and Mr. Conard's wife, and Liz's, her grandparents, a pair from the school, and my mom was in remission, so she got to go with us. And we walk into Irena's apartment. We're meeting her for the first time.

Sabrina Murphy: And it was just so amazing to see her because we had sent pictures and everything and communicated through letter. But then when we turned around and saw her, and she just... she knew us all by name and she called us over and gave us hugs.

Megan Felt: Then she looks up at my mom and she points and says, "Mama Megan."

Sabrina Murphy: It was just phenomenal to get to see her in person, and it was like finding a long-lost grandma that you didn't know you had missed.

Megan Felt: I remember just looking up at Irena just in total amazement, but yet looking over my shoulder and seeing my mom there with me. But people say, "What's your most memorable moment? That's definitely it, to have had Irena and my mom, the two most influential women in my life, the strongest women I've ever known, they're in the same room with me.

Norm Conard: Spending time with her was very emotional. And I might mention that the day the project started on September 23rd, 1999, didn't mean much to us at the time. We did not know that on that day, her son passed away with a heart attack. And she told her friends, "My beloved Adam has gone, and I don't think I'll live much longer." She didn't know it then, but on that same day, a new family in Kansas, and later on, she would tell us. She would say, "You have become my family now, and I didn't realize on the day that Adam passed that you started this project, which would lead you to me."

Megan Felt: We were preparing for September 12th, and then the morning of September 11th happens. And I was in Mr. Conard's Classroom watching it unfold, and we started thinking, "We're not going to go present now. We just can't." Well, the rabbi called the school, said, "Tomorrow is still on. We need Irena's story more now than ever." And we showed up. They said, "Well, we have 200 RSVPs. We have 400 seats set up. We'll see how the crowd is." Six hundred people showed up that night needing to hear the story of courage, and bravery, and hope. Irena always told us, "You can't separate people based on race, religion, and creed. You can only separate people based on good and evil and the good will triumph."

Sabrina Murphy: She had so many stories, so many examples of why you should treat others the way you do, that you need to pretty much just be respectful of everybody. But the one that sticks out the most I would say is her father taught her, at a very young age, that if someone is drowning, you need to jump in and save them regardless if you can swim or not. And that's what she thought of as the Jewish community as a whole was drowning.

Megan Felt: Irena's story was very much a light in my life, something that gave me encouragement that I needed as a 14-year-old, that if she could walk into the Warsaw Ghetto every day, not even being 5 feet tall, walking past the German officers with a child sedated in a gunny sack over her shoulder saying, "They're dead from disease. I'm going to go get rid of the body." What if the baby would have whimpered or cried? She would have been shot immediately along with the child. I thought, "My family and I can fight my mom's cancer. If she could do that, we can do this." So, Irena's story, I think very much impacted all of us in a very special, deep way. And as we got to know Irena and talk with her with letters back and forth after she responded to our first letter, we became very much family.

Norm Conard: Of course, her life was changed too. She went from someone who was somewhat obscure in the country of Poland to being a worldwide subject. In fact, in 2007, she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by the president of Poland, the prime minister of Israel, and our group. But, by this time, by 2007, and when she passed in 2008, there were so many chances of recognition worldwide, that she'd gone from someone who wasn't known in her own country to someone who became a worldwide figure.

Megan Felt: In 2008, we were able to make in May our last trip to see Irena before she passed. We got to see her May 3rd, then she ended up passing away 9 days later on May 12th. But before we left on that trip, she said, "You have changed my country, you have changed your country, and you have changed the world." And to hear that from Irena Sendler completely validated everything that we had strived for and done in the past, and I think it gave us a new passion to continue to share her story and her many mottos and feelings that she was taught as a child from her parents.

Norm Conard: In 2007, we wrote a grant called the Lowell Milken Center. Lowell Milken is an entrepreneur in California. He has developed a lot of educational foundations. And we wanted to develop projects with teachers worldwide about this type of story, this project-based learning, this performance-based learning, and in the last six years, we've developed hundreds of projects in all 50 States, 25 countries, similar to the Irena Sendler Project, and we bring in all American teachers, the best teachers in America, we have interns. The outreach has become quite large. And so, what has happened, the Irena Sendler Project started in a classroom, a small rural classroom. Now, our classroom is the world, and so we reach all over the world, countries everywhere. Our website and the Irena Sendler website have a tremendous potential, and the potential is being reached. And so, for future teachers, there are tremendous projects out there that you can take and make into something very special with your student, powerful exhibits of what young people can do in the world. And there's no limiting the young people in our classrooms. There can be no limit set for them.

Megan Felt: It's wonderful to see students and teachers learn new ideas, different ways to present the stories, and the fact that they can research and learn about an unsung hero. Anyone can google Albert Einstein and have a project done in a half an hour, but to take a name like Irena Sendler back in 1999 when there was one website to take a name like Andrew Jackson Higgins or Florence Thompson Owens, you're going to find...it takes much more in-depth research, and passion, and desire for the students to continue going, but they also create an ownership and a passion that's irreplaceable and cannot be created any other way.

Norm Conard: We were just surprised constantly about the power of the story.

Sabrina Murphy: I think the reason why it keeps going is it encourages so many other people and makes them realize that one person can make a difference, and it doesn't matter where your economic status or your educational status, you can make a difference in other people's lives.