Taube grantee and seasoned San Francisco filmmaker Mary Skinner's Irena Sendler: In the Name of their Mothers has been selected from over 600 submissions to be one of the featured films at the United Nations Association's 15th Annual Film Festival (UNAFF), which will take place October 18-28, 2012. The UNAFF was originally conceived to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Festival will present 70 documentaries on the theme of human dignity. This honor is the latest in a series bestowed upon Irena Sendler: In the Name of their Mothers, which also was awarded the 2012 Gracie Award for Outstanding Documentary. The film will show on October 23 at 9:15 pm at the Jewish Community Center in Palo Alto.
Irena Sendler: in the Name of Their Mothers trailer
Description:
Irena Sendler was a twenty-nine-year-old Catholic social worker when the Nazis imprisoned Warsaw's Jews without food and medicine behind a ghetto wall. She and her friends began smuggling in aid and smuggling children out. They hid them in convents, orphanages and private homes. Soon the women were appealing to Jewish mothers to part with their children in order to save them. For five years, Sendler's network cared for the children, disguised their identities and moved them constantly, to keep them from being discovered and killed by the Nazis. They joined forces with the Polish Resistance and received money from abroad to fund and protect the children's caretakers and preserve their true identities, hoping to reunite them with their Jewish families after the war. In October of 1943, Irena Sendler was captured by the Gestapo, imprisoned and tortured. When she refused to divulge anything about her organization, she was sentenced to death. She escaped on the day she was to be executed, thanks to a large bribe from the Polish Resistance. All of the 2,500 children rescued by her network survived the war, and many were reunited with their Jewish families. After the war, Communist authorities silenced Sendler and her liaisons because of their connection to the Polish Resistance.
Website for Irena Sendler: In the Name of their Mothers: www.irenasendlerfilm.com
Website for UNAFF: www.unaff.org
Link to Press Release from UNAFF
