2/15 | Birthday of Irena Sendler
Today in Yiddishkayt… February 15 Birthday of Irena Sendler, Polish Resistance Member & Savior of Children in Warsaw Ghetto Irena Sendler (Sendlerowa in Polish) was born Irena Krzyżanowska to a Polish Catholic family in Warsaw on February 15, 1910. Her father, a physician, died from typhus that he contracted during an epidemic in 1917. He was the only doctor in his town of Otwock (about 15 miles southeast of Warsaw) who would treat the poor, mostly Jewish community suffering with this disease. After his death, the Jewish community offered to pay for...
Read More12/15 | Birthday of L. L. Zamenhof,
Today in Yiddishkayt… December 15 Birthday of L. L. Zamenhof, Creator of Esperanto Born Leyzer Zamenhof in Bialystok in 1859, Zamenhof grew up a Yiddish and Russian speaker in a city with a majority of Jews but with a significant population of Poles, Russians, Germans, Belarusians, and Lithuanians—each group speaking its on ethnic language. Zamenhof believed that hostility between groups was often the result of misunderstanding and as a child began to develop the idea that language had the potential to unify as well as divide. He came to believe that a common language, alongside...
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