Do we have a responsibility to help someone else at great personal risk? What if lives are at stake—yours and someone else’s?
Irena Sendler answered those questions during World War II, when she was a Catholic social worker in Poland. She smuggled some 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto to save them from the Nazi regime.
The Jewish Studies program in LMU’s Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts will be hosting a photo exhibit and panel discussion dedicated to Sendler, who died in 2008. The discussion, titled “Am I My Brother’s Keeper? The Duty to Rescue,” will feature speakers from three different religious traditions tackling that ethical question.
“The issue is not just now, when people need saving all over the world, but in particular during the Holocaust, when there were a number of Polish Catholics who went out of their way under the threat of death, to save Jews,” said Holli Levitsky, head of the Jewish Studies program.
Among those speaking on the panel will be Rabbi Arthur Gross-Schaefer, chair of the Marketing and Business Law Department in the College of Business Administration; Amir Hussain, professor in the Theological Studies Department in Bellarmine College; and Roberto Dell’Oro, professor in Theological Studies who has also taught in the Bioethics Institute.
There will also be a photo exhibit titled “Polish Heroes: Those Who Rescued Jews” will be on display in the University Hall lobby. Both events are co-sponsored by the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland in Los Angeles.
The panel discussion will be held on Oct. 12 from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. in the Ahmanson Auditorium in University Hall.
The photo exhibit will remain on display through Nov. 2.
