Nine years after starting their project to find an unsung hero, Norm Conard and a group of former Uniontown High School students are returning to visit the person who inspired that project.

Conard, the director of the Lowell Milken Center, and the students will travel to Warsaw, Poland next week to visit Irena Sendler, a Polish woman who rescued 2,500 children from Nazi Germans during World War II. She is also the focus of "Life in a Jar," the dramatic play that the students wrote and began performing as part of their National History Day project in 1999.

(Advertisement)

The group plans to leave for Poland, April 29, to celebrate Sendler's 98th birthday, visit various spots where Sendler saved children, speak with Polish students and promote Sendler's story of courage and love for others, regardless of race, religion or creed, Conard said in a statement.

"Life in a Jar" is still being performed by students in front of large crowds, even after the original founders of the project finished school and went on to pursue various careers. The play has been presented more than 250 times in different venues across the nation and in Poland. The play got its name from the fact that Sendler would keep lists of the names of Jewish children and their adoptive families, and bury them in jars with plans to reunite them after the war was over.

Since the student-driven project began, Sendler's story has earned national and global recognition and has blossomed into something that even Conard and the project founders said they did not expect; a phenomenon that now includes several performances of the play, the sale of "Life in a Jar" DVDs, a Website, www.irendasendler.org and various other appearances by project members.

Since 1999, Sendler and project members have been featured in newspapers, magazines, television programs, and radio broadcasts all around the world.

The project founders first visited Sendler in Poland when they were students in 2001, and their most recent visit took place in 2005. Sendler, who lived in quiet seclusion and rarely granted interviews before the students discovered her story, has since become a globally-known figure, Conard said in the statement.

"My emotion is being shadowed by the fact that no one from the circle of my faithful coworkers, who constantly risked their lives, could live long enough to enjoy all the honors that now are falling upon me," Sendler wrote in a letter to students after their 2001 trip to Poland. "I can't find the words to thank you, my dear girls. Before the day you have written the play 'Life in a Jar,' nobody in my own country and few in the whole world knew about my person and my work during the war."

Sendler and the members of the "Life in a Jar" project have been recognized by the President of Poland, Pope John Paul II, and the Prime Minister of Israel. Last fall, Sendler was even nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for her heroic efforts that took place more than 60 years ago.

Seven years ago, Michael Glowinski, who lives in Warsaw, Poland, told project members, "You are rescuers, rescuers of Irena's story for the world." Glowinski was one of thousands of children Sendler rescued from the Warsaw Ghetto during the Holocaust.

Conard and other project members will travel to Poland, April 29, to visit Sendler, and also witness the presentation of the Irena Sendler award, a $10,000 award that is presented annually to a Polish teacher who best represents the teaching of Holocaust education. The award ceremony is scheduled to take place April 30, at the Palace of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The group is scheduled to return to the United States on May 4, Conard said in the statement.

For more information, contact Conard at the Lowell Milken Center at (620) 223-9991, or by e-mail at nconard@terraworld.net.