The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler

This is one of my favorite Holocaust movies. It is also probably relatively unheard of, but it is definitely worth the watch.

Great movie and based on a true story.

Received in excellent condition which is important to me, since it is a true account of a historical event.

I've always been interested in the Holocaust, because I'm an activist for women's and GLBT rights and equality. I see certain pundits and politicians of the right-wing who are using exactly the same formula that Hitler used to get an entire population to accept the dehumanization of certain groups of people. Sendler risked her own life to get Jewish children out of Warsaw as they were being rounded up for the death camps, a story I had never heard about. I find it fascinating that so many 'good Germans' were so thoroughly brainwashed against their friends and neighbors that they happily participated in helping the Germans put every Jew and other 'sub-human' or 'non-Aryan' into railroad cars to be sent to their deaths. When I see the pundits of Fixed Noise refer to those they dislike as 'rag-heads' for Muslims, use every insult for blacks except the N-word to disrespect the President and encourage their unbalanced viewers to commit acts of violence upon whomever they have targeted as an 'acceptable' target, I see the voices and faces of hatred and bigotry that were so prevalent in Hitler's day. When Bill O'Reilly used the term "Tiller the Killer" to describe a women's clinic doctor over a several week period because he personally is against a woman's right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, until finally one of the fanatics that obeys the orders coming out of the television hunted down Dr. Tiller and shot him---in church---there is absolutely no difference between brainwashing against doctors who perform abortions by the right-wing and the brainwashing of the German people by Hitler and his henchmen until virtually every non-Jew in Berlin and the big cities in Germany got whatever weapons they could muster, from guns to knives to machetes to clubs and went out in the street, demolishing every Jewish-owned business they could find and beating, stabbing, shooting, and killing with their bare hands every Jewish man, woman, or child that they could find. "Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it." Santayana It's too bad that our non-functional education system fails to teach students the end result of hatred and bigotry. American children should learn about the Holocaust all throughout their public education so they know what can handle if they allow themselves to be brainwashed into fear of and hatred toward any ethnic, religious, economic, gender-oriented, or racial group. If they allow themselves to be conned into thinking that men are better than women or Christians are better than Jews or Muslims or atheists, or white people are smarter, better, and should have the right to own members of other races, then the kind of behavior displayed in Germany and Poland during the war can----AND WILL---begin again.

"The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler" is based on a true story which took place during the Nazi occupation of Poland during WWII. The story is powerful, as it highlights the selfless caring of many Polish people as they risked their lives to take in Jewish children, given up by their parents at the point of heartbreak, so that the Jewish children could survive the holocaust that was soon to murder the Jewish population of Poland. Irena Sendler (1910-2008) is the real-life heroine who smuggled the children out of the Nazi-formed Jewish ghettos before their families were trucked to the Treblinka extermination camp. It is essential that true stories like this one be told by film so that the emotions and the reality of the Holocaust can be grasped by today's generations, who are living 80 years after those cruel and inhumane times. Some today try to teach that the holocaust never existed. That is a lie. It did exist and it was as outrageously barbaric as this movie depicts.The acting in this film is very good. The quality of the DVD is very good. My only complaint is that the dialogue in the film, by the nature of the film's content, is often so soft that I had to put on closed caption to read what was being said because I could not clearly hear it. But that is not a big enough problem to keep me from highly recommending this movie to others.As a side note: Irena Sendler was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. Al Gore co-won it that year, along with a climate change agency. That seems unfortunate. Ms. Sendler saved 2,500 Jewish children in Poland from being murdered by the Nazis in WWII. Al Gore won his half of the Nobel Peace Prize, according to nobelprize.org, for his tireless efforts to put the climate crisis on the political agenda. The climate crisis is not settled science, as it remains a matter of dispute between highly respected scientists. That the lives of 2,500 children were saved is a fact. Irena Sendler deserves our recognition and esteem for the heroic, humanitarian work she did, at the risk of her own life. She deserves an award!

A true story of how she was able to save so many Jews, a must watch.

A very timely look back at how decent people responded to the horror of the Nazi rule of Poland. The film was made as straightforward as possible, and including some painful events, but still inspired the courage we all need to face similar situations today. I highly recommend it.

A heartwarming lesson about how to value ourselves and others

I had heard of Shindler and read about similar acts but its so powerful when see it in film. What an Amazing young Woman. Makes be Proud to be a Social Worker

Très bon film je recommande

Problemlos, Product wurde abgespielt. Auch in Ordnung

Reasonable attempt to bring to the screen a difficult story of an extroadinary Polish woman who saved thousands of Jewish children from the Warsaw ghetto during WW2. There is however too much to show and it is impossible to do justice to her amazing story and is better to read the book 'Irena's Children '. However if you don't read the book this movie gives a short summary of her life and is good viewing.