Two Poles honoured in London for helping Jews during Holocaust

The London Jewish community on Thursday honoured persons who helped Jews during the Holocaust, including two Poles, Irena Sendler and Janusz Korczak, by unveiling commemorative plaques dedicated to them at the Hoop Lane cemetery, located north of the city.

The London Jewish community on Thursday honoured persons who helped Jews during the Holocaust, including two Poles, Irena Sendler and Janusz Korczak, by unveiling commemorative plaques dedicated to them at the Hoop Lane cemetery, located north of the city.

Sendler was a Warsaw social worker who, during World War II, smuggled hundreds of Jewish children from the city's Jewish ghetto to save them from the Holocaust.

Korczak, a pre-war children's author, educator and head of a Jewish orphanage in Warsaw, during World War II chose to die in the Nazi-German Treblinka concentration camp together with his orphanage charges despite being offered freedom.

Thursday's ceremony was organised by the West London Synagogue. Other plaques were dedicated to the King of Denmark, Christian X, who organised transport of Jewish children from the Czech Republic to Great Britain, Sir Nicholas Winton and Ho Feng-Shan, a Chinese diplomat in Vienna recognised as the Righteous Among the Nations.

Historian Robert Lacey, who took part in the project, told PAP that the commemorative wall at the Hoop Lane cemetery is the only such place of its kind in the whole of Great Britain.

The unveiling ceremony was attended by the Ambassadors of Poland and Israel in Great Britain, a friend of Irena Sendler and activist for the Polish-Jewish rapprochement, Lili Pohlmann, who was rescued from the Holocaust by the Kiev-Halych Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky, as well as participants of Kindertransport and Winton's daughter, Barbara.