Irena Sendler Named as Patron of Ciechanów STO Community Elementary School

Mateusz Szczepaniak, 16 November 2016
The STO Community Elementary School in Ciechanów celebrated its twenty fifth anniversay on Friday, 11th December 2015. To mark the occasion, the school received a new patron - Irena Sendler. Janina Zgrzembska, Irena Sendler's daughter, took part in the dedication ceremony.

Społeczne Towarzystwo Oświatowe (STO), to which the school in Ciechanów belongs, was established in 1987. Its schools first opened in 1989 roku and today, it has close to 150 throughout Poland. STO is an NGO dedicated to the spreading, in Poland, the concept of modern schools, linking together education and training.

Naming the school in Ciechanów after its new patron came as the result of a decision taken, last year, by its students. The anniversary celebrations took place in the presence of Janin Zgrzembska (daughter of Irena Sendler), Anna Mieszkowska (Irena Sendler's biographer), the founders of the schools, members of the Parents Councilmembers of the Board of the Społeczne Towarzystwa Oświatowe, school graduates, local city councillors, representatives of NGO's, the media and the school's pupils, parents and teachers. POLIN Museum was represented by Klara Jackl, Coordinator of the "Polish Righteous - Restoring Memory" project.

The school received its standard and awards were presented to two of the school's activists - Halina Ostrowsk (school secretary) and Joanna Śpiewak (the school's history teacher). The entertainment section of the event began with a performance by a school graduate, singer Dorota "Doda" Rabczewska. Teachers and students also participated in stage.

Irena Sendler- a Righteous Among the Nations, who saved many Jewish children from the Holocaust by helping them to escape from the Warsaw ghetto. Between the years 1939 and1942, working in Warsaw's Social Welfare Department, she organised a network of a dozen or so social workers who led Jewish children out of the ghetto and placed them, on the "Aryan side", with Polish families, in orphanages or in convents. She noted the true data of each child on cards and placed them into glass bottles which were burind underground - so that they could be recovered after the War and the children could then have their true identity returned to them. From 1942, she chaired the children's department of the Council to Aid Jews "Żegota". Read more on our website.