Play depicts Holocaust heroine

The play "Life in a Jar," presented by the Life in a Jar Foundation from Kansas City, is coming to Amherst.

The play concerns the life of Irena Sendler, a Polish-Catholic woman, who was recently nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Along with many others, she managed to smuggle 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942 and 1943 during the Holocaust.

The children were placed with Polish families, in convents and Catholic orphanages. She kept track of their identities by writing the names of the children, their parents or grandparents, and "foster parents" on pieces of paper. She hid the papers in sealed glass jars buried in a garden, so she could reunite the saved children with their families after the war.

Sendler has been called a true Holocaust heroine. In 1965, she was granted one of the first medals from Yad Vashem. In 2007, she was a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize. That same year, she was honored by the Polish government for her extraordinary efforts. Now 97 years old, she lives in a nursing home in Warsaw, Poland.

The play will be performed at 1:30 p.m. Sunday, March 30 at Temple Beth Am, 4660 Sheridan Drive, near North Forest Road. For ticket information, call the Holocaust Resource Center of Buffalo at 634-9535. A dessert reception will follow.

A performance will also be held at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 29 at the Montante Center of Canisius College, 2001 Main St., Buffalo. Call 888-2795.

The Holocaust Resource Center of Buffalo, located in Cheektowaga, is a nonprofit, educational agency dedicated to perpetuate the memory of the Holocaust and of those who suffered and died during it, for the current generation and those of the future. The center's activities are designed to heighten awareness and knowledge of the Holocaust.

The resource center founder is Toby Ticktin Back, who serves as director emerita. She had firsthand knowledge of the impact of the Holocaust on the survivors and their families. Her grandmother lost her family in Poland. While living with her grandmother in Philadelphia, Back listened to stories from survivors living in the area.

In the 1970s, she was in Buffalo with her five children and noticed their textbooks had little or no reference to the Holocaust. She started to speak at high schools and went on to write her master's thesis at the University at Buffalo, titled "A Prototype Holocaust Resource Center."

She then formed a committee, and in 1983, the Jewish Federation of Greater Buffalo provided funding to start the center.