Special guests to attend 'Sendler' premiere

Friday, April 3, 2009

A few special guests will be part of a world television movie premiere next month in downtown Fort Scott.

Renata Zajdman, who as a young child was one of more than 2,500 Jewish children rescued from the Warsaw Ghetto by Polish heroine Irena Sendler during World War II, will be in Fort Scott next month for the world premiere of the Hallmark Hall of Fame film, "The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler." The premiere event is set to take place at 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 15, at the Liberty Theatre, 113 S. Main St.

Other guests who have confirmed their attendance at the event include Jeff Most, the producer of the film, and Charles Lawson, a former American Ambassador to Latvia, a country in northern Europe where the movie was filmed. Other visitors from seven states, including New York, Pennsylvania, Florida and California, also plan to attend the premiere, Lowell Milken Center Director and "Life in a Jar" co-founder Norm Conard said.

"It's very exciting all that's developing with this," Conard said Thursday.

At the age of 14, Zajdman survived in the streets of Warsaw, Poland, until she was rescued by Sendler. She currently lives in Montreal, Canada, and has previously visited Kansas and participated in presentations of the student-driven "Life in a Jar" project that focuses on Sendler's life and heroic efforts.

According to the project's Web site, www.irenasendler.org, Zajdman has worked with students on the project and has provided a powerful voice for "repairing the world," which is the meaning of the Jewish phrase Tikkun Olam and is the project's motto.

"Hers (Zajdman) is quite a fascinating story," Conard said.

The Hallmark-produced film marks the first time that Sendler's story has been used as the basis for a feature film. The network television premiere of the movie is scheduled for 8 p.m. Sunday, April 19, on CBS ( KOAM-TV, Ch. 7, locally). The film stars Anna Paquin as Sendler and Marcia Gay Harden as Sendler's mother, Janina. The film's cast also includes Nathaniel Parker and Goran Visnijic.

The "Life in a Jar" project tells Sendler's story, which was discovered in 1999 by a group of Uniontown High School students and has since become globally known. The basis for the project is a dramatic stage play designed by those students that has been performed hundreds of times in the United States and around the world since that time. Students from rural high schools across the country, as well as students in Poland, have performed the play several times over the years.

Working as a social worker in the 1940s, Sendler led an effort to smuggle thousands of Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto after getting the consent of the children's parents. The children were given new identities and placed with Polish families and in convents. Sendler kept a hidden record of their birth names and where they were placed buried in jars with the hope that they would someday be reunited with their own families.

Sendler was nominated in 2007 for a Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts. She died in May 2008 at the age of 98.

Zajdman is expected to be present at the film premiere next month, along with Hallmark representatives and several original and current "Life in a Jar" cast members. Guests are expected to arrive in limousines and make red carpet entrances starting at 6:30 p.m. the evening of the premiere, Conard said.

More than 400 people have already made reservations for the event, a Fort Scott Area Chamber of Commerce statement said.

For more information on Sendler, visit www.irenasendler.org. For more information on the film premiere, contact the Lowell Milken Center at (620) 223-9991.