Irena Sendler, the Angel of the Warsaw Ghetto

 

Irena Sendler, the Angel of the Warsaw Ghetto

Author: Carmen Mª Morcillo López, 1ºA (2015-2016)

 

Irena Sendler (1910-2008), better known as the "Angel of the Warsaw Ghetto", was a Polish Catholic nurse and social worker, who during World War II helped and saved more than 2,500 Jewish children in the Warsaw Ghetto. . Despite the political and religious ideals of the time, this brave woman risked her life to save thousands of innocent people. She was nominated for the Novel Peace Prize in 2007, recognized as Righteous among the Nations and made a Dame of the Order of the White Eagle (Polish distinction).

 

She was born in Warsaw. She is the daughter of a doctor very dedicated to the Jewish community, when he died, it was that same community that paid for Irena's nursing studies.

 

After Germany's invasion of Poland in 1939, she created the Warsaw ghetto for herself in 1942. Irena's sympathy for this community led her to join the Council for the Aid of Jews, with the aim of alleviating the typhus epidemic. So the Nazis were diligent and allowed the medical corps to do its job. Over time, Irena realized the dark objective that Nazi Germany had for that place and decided to get the little ones out of that place.

 

Despite being a Catholic, she decided to wear a Star of David bracelet so as not to attract attention. She soon began visiting various Jewish families offering them the possibility of taking her children out of the ghetto by various methods. She did not guarantee success, so many families were reluctant.

Irena Sendler with a girl in Warsaw during the 40s

 

 

 

The families that accepted handed over their children, and they were initially taken out by ambulances, under the pretext that they were seriously ill on their way to the hospital. Thanks to her collaborators, she was able to get the children out, although over time it became a more difficult task. Ella Irena tried to convince again the families to whom she had offered her help, although most of the time she did not see them again. The vast majority had been taken to concentration camps by death trains.

 

Despite the difficulties, Irena did not give up. She continued with her nursing work and concealed her intentions in this way. She started taking the children out of the ghetto inside garbage bags, coffins, etc. While she carried out that work of salvation, Jolanta, Irena's code name, registered all the children that she managed to get out of the ghetto so that they would not lose their identity. Some wore medals, for example, but never anything too clear to give them away.

 

 

 

On October 20, 1943, she was arrested by the Gestapo and taken to Pawlak prison, where she was tortured, although she never revealed the whereabouts of the escaping Jews. Finally, she was sentenced to death. However, a Polish soldier released her on the excuse of further questioning. After that event, she continued working under a false identity and took care not to leave any clues, burying her records in the garden of a neighbour of hers.

 

Once the war ended, she Irena dug up the lists with the names of the Jewish children and handed them over to the Committee to rescue the surviving Jews. Most of those who escaped were raised in orphanages, by anonymous couples, and even by Irena's acquaintances since their biological families perished in the concentration camps.

 

After that dark time, she married and had children. Irena's work was not discovered until years later, where her photograph was recognized by thousands of men and women who claimed to have been saved and cared for by this nurse. Finally, she died in 2008.

 

“The reason why I rescued the children originates from my home, from my childhood. I was brought up in the belief that a person in need should be helped from the heart, regardless of their religion or their nationality ».

With affection,

Ruben

Edward Donall Thomas 2

 

Edward Donall Thomas 2

The bone marrow transplant, the Nobel Prize and the death of Dr. Edward Donnall Thomas

The bone marrow transplant, the Nobel Prize and the death of Dr. Edward Donnall Thomas

From a surgical point of view, bone marrow transplantation is the simplest of all transplants. Currently, in most cases, it is not even necessary to puncture the bone marrow, it is enough to stimulate the donor with filgrastim, so that after four to five days we can obtain, through apheresis, hematopoietic cells in enormous quantities, the same that allow the recipient to change his entire immune and hematopoietic system. This is a formidable challenge, changing this system in a human is the most difficult of the biological tasks that transplant doctors carry out. All of us who currently work in this field have to thank those who preceded us and endured the human hardships inherent in medical work. For this reason, we deeply regret the loss of a pioneering doctor in this field, who had the courage, imagination and perseverance to start a new frontier in medical knowledge. His drive and leadership was a decisive factor for the initial development in hematopoietic cell transplantation. Not surprisingly, he is one of the few clinicians who has received the Nobel Prize in recent years.

 

Dr. Edward Donnall Thomas, pioneer of hematopoietic cell transplantation, passed away on October 20. Born in Mart, Texas on March 15, 1920, Dr. Thomas was the son of Edward E. Thomas, a country physician, and Angie Hill Donnall Thomas, a teacher. Dr. Thomas did the first bone marrow cell transplant in 1956, before HLA leukocyte antigens were known. The rejection of the transplanted cells gave rise to studies that showed that leukocyte antigen matching was necessary to achieve a durable engraftment. In 1969, Dr. Thomas performed the first successful donor-recipient transplant other than identical twins. In 1988 he was named president of the American Society of Hematology.

 

In 1990 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine, sharing this honor with Dr. Joseph E. Murray, a pioneer in the field of kidney transplantation. Both Dr. Thomas and Dr. Murray had been fellow interns at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital, and both managed to solve the problem that had prevented the success of human-to-human organ transplants, namely rejection reactions. . Dr. Thomas investigated numerous immunosuppressive drugs and discovered the efficacy of methotrexate in preventing rejection and graft-versus-host disease; he retired in 1989. The same year that Dr. Thomas was awarded the Nobel Prize, Octavio Paz, a Mexican writer, also received this outstanding distinction. One early fall morning, a reporter woke Dr. Thomas up to break the news of the announcement in Sweden and interview him. When his wife, Dorothy (Dottie), overheard him talking about transplants, she asked him what he was doing giving an interview at that hour. Don replied, "We won the Nobel Prize." The use of the plural was deliberate. Although Dottie's name did not appear on the award Murray and Thomas won, Murray said that his wife, his colleagues, associates and patients had helped him obtain it. Humble, he explained that it had not been an individual effort, but a collective one. Although he had some financial needs, like trading in his old Datsun pickup, he donated the entire $350,000 he received from the Nobel Prize to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (FHCRC), where he worked for decades.

 

In April 1994, Dr. Thomas came to the XXV World Congress of Hematology that was held in Cancun, Mexico, during which he gave one of the keynote addresses. On those same dates he was named Honorary Member of the National Academy of Medicine of Mexico, being then its president. Dr. Carlos Campillo. Dr. Ricardo Sosa Sánchez, a recently deceased Mexican hematologist, was the first Mexican student of Dr. Thomas at the FHCRC, and upon his return to Mexico he performed the first hematopoietic cell transplant in the country in 1980, putting into practice the knowledge he had acquired at the FHCRC, under the tutelage of Dr. Thomas.

 

The work of Dr. Thomas laid the foundations for the practice, now routine of allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplants, which have saved many lives of patients with leukemia and other hematological diseases in which hematopoietic tissue replacement can be curative.

 

Dr. Thomas himself said: "There was a time when a diagnosis of leukemia was a death sentence. The chances of survival were close to zero." These times have changed and a good part of the changes have been supported by the work of Dr. E. D. Thomas. rest in peace.

 

 

Source:

University magazine

Hematology Service, "Dr. José Eleuterio González" University Hospital.

 

Monterrey, N.l, Mexico.

 

With affection,

Ruben

 

Edward Donall Thomas 1

 

Edward Donall Thomas 1

 

Source: from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Edward Donnall "Don" Thomas (March 15, 1920 – October 20, 2012)[1] was an American physician, professor emeritus at the University of Washington, and director emeritus of the clinical research division at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. In 1990 he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Joseph E. Murray for the development of cell and organ transplantation. Thomas and his wife and research partner Dottie Thomas developed bone marrow transplantation as a treatment for leukemia.[2]

 

 

Contents

1          Biography

2          Awards and honors

  

    

Biography

Born in Mart, Texas, Thomas often shadowed his father who was a general practice doctor. Later, he attended the University of Texas at Austin where he studied chemistry and chemical engineering, graduating with a B.A. in 1941 and an M. A. in 1943. While Thomas was an undergraduate he met his wife, Dorothy (Dottie) Martin while she was training to be journalist. They had three children. Thomas entered Harvard Medical School in 1943, receiving an M.D. in 1946. Dottie became a lab technician during this time to support the family, and the pair worked closely thereafter. He did his residency at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital before joining the US Army. "In 1955, he was appointed physician in chief at the Mary Imogene Bassett Hospital, now Bassett Medical Center, in Cooperstown, N.Y., an affiliate of Columbia University." [3]

 

At Mary Imogene Bassett, he began to study rodents that received lethal doses of radiation who were then saved by an infusion of marrow cells. At the time, patients who underwent bone marrow transplantation all died from infections or immune reactions that weren't seen in the rodent studies. Thomas began to use dogs as a model system. In 1963, he moved his lab to the United States Public Health Service in Seattle.[4]

 

Thomas also received National Medal of Science in 1990. In 2003 he was one of 22 Nobel laureates who signed the Humanist Manifesto.[5]

 

He died of heart failure and is survived by his three children.[4]

 

Awards and honors

1965-1969 Hematology Study Section, National Institutes of Health

1969-1973 Member, Board of Trustees and Medical and Scientific Advisory Committee, Leukemia Society of America, Inc.

1970-1974 Clinical Cancer Investigation Review Committee, National Cancer Institute

1974 First Annual Eugene C. Eppinger Lecture at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital and the Harvard Medical School

1975 A. Ross McIntyre Award, University of Nebraska Medical Center

1975 The Henry M. Stratton Lecture, American Society of Hematology, Dallas

1977 The Lilly Lecture, Royal College of Physicians, London

1979 The Philip Levine Award, American Society of Clinical Pathologists, New Orleans

1980 American Cancer Society Award for Distinguished Service in Basic Research

1981 Kettering Prize of the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation for contributions to the diagnosis and treatment of cancer

1981 Honorary Doctorate of Medicine, University of Cagliari, Sardinia

1981 Special Keynote Address Award, American Society of Therapeutic Radiologists

1982 Stratton Lecture, International Society of Hematology

1982 Paul Aggeler Lecturer, University of California, San Francisco

1983 David A. Karnofsky Memorial Lecturer, Annual Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology

1983 Robert Roesler de Villiers Award, Leukemia Society of American

1984 Sixty-fifth Mellon Lecturer, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, May 13

1985 Stanley Wright Memorial Lecturer, Annual Meeting of the Western Society for Pediatric Research

1987 Karl Landsteiner Memorial Award, Annual Meeting of the American Association of Blood Banks,

1987-1988 President, American Society of Hematology

1989 Elected Corresponding Member, Academie Royale de Medecine de Belgigue

1990 Terry Fox Award, Canada

1990 Gairdner Foundation International Award

1990 North American Medical Association of Hong Kong Prize

1990 Nobel Prize in Medicine

1990 Presidential Medal of Science

1991 Adolfo Ferrata Lecture, Italian Society of Hematology, Verona, Italy

1991 Honorary Doctorate of Medicine, University of Verona

1992 Kober Medal, American Association of Physicians

1992 Honorary Member, The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada

1992 Honorary Doctorate of Medicine, University of Parma

1994 Honorary Member, National Academia of Medicine

1994 Honorary Degree, University of Barcelona

1996 Honorary Degree, University of Warsaw

1998 Medal of Merit, State of Washington

 

With affection,

Ruben

 

Rene Rios Boetinger Pepo (cartoonist)

 

Rene Rios Boetinger

Pepo (cartoonist)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Born   René Rodolfo Ríos Boettiger

15 December 1911

Concepción, Chile

Died    14 July 2000 (aged 88)

Santiago, Chile

Area(s)           Writer, Artist

Notable works           Condorito

Viborita

CanCan

Pobre Diablo

Pingüino

Children         2

René Ríos Boettiger (Concepción, 15 December 1911 — 14 July 2000), also known as Pepo, was a Chilean cartoonist, creator of the famous character Condorito.[1] He has been credited as the most prominent Chilean graphic humorist of the 20th century.[2][3][4]

 

Biography

He was the son of the marriage of Amanda Boettiger Krause and the doctor René Ríos Guzmán.[5] He published his first cartoon at the age of 7 in the newspaper El Sur of Concepción.[5] Encouraged by his father, he continued with his drawings until he held his first exhibition, at the age of 10, at the Palet confectionery in his city.[6] Although he studied medicine at the Universidad de Concepción, Rios abandoned his studies in the early 1930s to devote all his time to creating his cartoons.[5][6] In 1932 he moved to Santiago to work as a cartoonist at the satirical magazine Topaze.[6] Adopting the pseudonym "Pepo" (from pepón, "little barrel", his childhood nickname), he created the comic strip Don Gabito for the magazine, a strip featuring a caricatured Chilean president Gabriel González Videla.[6] He also caricatured president Pedro Aguirre Cerda as Don Pedrito.[6]

 

In 1949[7][8] he created Condorito, his most famous character, taking the idea from the condor of the Chilean coat of arms.

 

Self caricature by Pepo

Over the next sixty years Rios contributed cartoons to a great number of publications, including El Pingüino, Ganso, Pobre Diablo, Can Can, Pichanga, El Saquero, El Peneca, and branched out into other forms of illustration as well.[6][9] Rios died of cancer in 2000 at the age of 88.[10][11]

 

A great lover of the seaside, Rios often drew while looking at the sea at El Quisco on the Chilean Central Coast. A statue of Condorito now stands at the location. In 2000, an effort led by Omar Pérez Santiago (a scholar of Chilean cartooning and a co-founder of the academic Chilean Center for Comics) resulted in a sculpture of Condorito memorializing Rios being installed in the Chilean House of Culture in San Miguel.

With affection,

Ruben

Who was Luis Palau?

 

Luis Palau

Who was Luis Palau?

Luis Palau (1934—2021) was a well-known international evangelist who preached the gospel of Jesus Christ to millions of people worldwide.

 

Luis Palau was born in Argentina, near the capital city of Buenos Aries. He was born again at age 12, and as a teen began serving the Lord in a variety of ways, including street preaching and hosting a radio program. He moved to the United States in 1960 where he trained in a ministry in California for a while and received an education at Multnomah School of the Bible in Oregon.

 

In 1962 Luis Palau interned with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and served as a Spanish language translator for Rev. Graham in the 1960s and ’70s. In 1978, Graham helped Palau to launch his own evangelistic organization, the Luis Palau Association. Palau and his wife, Patricia, spent the next four decades dedicated to missions work.

 

Much of Luis Palau’s ministry was focused on Latin America, where he was born and raised. He hosted two daily radio programs, published several books, wrote a Bible commentary, and provided video training courses, all in Spanish. He preached in Colombia, Peru, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Mexico and crossed the ocean to preach in Spain. Government officials in Latin America often called on Luis Palau for prayer, and he met personally with dozens of national leaders to share the gospel with them one-on-one. All of this contributed to his being called “The Billy Graham of Latin America.”

 

But the ministry of Luis Palau extended well beyond the Spanish-speaking world. He and his ministry team held more than 500 evangelistic campaigns and “festivals” in more than 80 countries. He preached to large crowds in New York City, Buenos Aires, London, Madrid, Singapore, Hong Kong, Cairo, and Mexico City. He preached in the Soviet Union, and, after the Berlin Wall came down, he held open-air stadium campaigns in former Soviet countries. He held massive evangelistic efforts in Asia and the Middle East, as well. His preaching led to over 1 million decisions for Jesus Christ, according to his official website.

 

Luis Palau was an innovator in ministry. In 1999 he steered away from the traditional “crusade” model of evangelism that he had learned under Billy Graham and took a fresh approach. Rather than holding crusades, Palau began hosting outdoor Christian “festivals.” These events, designed to attract unbelievers, had corporate sponsors and featured Christian rock bands, skate parks, and various family activities.

 

Palau’s fifty books include God Is Relevant, Where Is God When Bad Things Happen?, and Say Yes! His radio programs such as Luis Palau Responde and Reaching Your World aired on thousands of radio outlets in 48 countries. He also made extensive use of television and social media to share the gospel. After receiving a diagnosis of terminal cancer in 2018, Palau wrote another book, My Life in Seven Words.

 

Luis Palau died at his home in Portland, Oregon, at the age of 86. Three of his sons are currently leading the Luis Palau Association, and the ministry continues.

 

Luis Palau loved the Lord and served Him wholeheartedly for over 55 years. His message was centered on the gospel: “Jesus, through death, destroyed the power of death over us. Only His victory can deliver us into true life. Is that not Good News?” he said.

 

Here are some other things Luis Palau said:

 

“Jesus was able to conquer the grave and He is able to redeem your story.”

 

“If you are to be impressed by anything about me, then be impressed with this: I’m not all that special. Is that not a greater testimony? God uses the weak.”

 

“The best periods of my life were those times I really did simply delight in the Lord. He is the loving Father, the kind Master, the One with greater patience than we could ever imagine. Joy, full blessing, laughter—those are the hallmarks of our relationship with God.”

With affection,

Ruben

Luis Palau Evangelist preacher

 

Luis Palau

 

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

 

              November 27, 1934

Ingeniero Maschwitz, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Died    March 11, 2021 (aged 86)

Portland, Oregon, U.S.

Nationality    Argentine, American

Education      Multnomah Bible College

Occupation    Evangelist

Years active   1960–2021

Known for     Christian evangelist, author of books on Christianity

 

Luis Palau Jr. (November 27, 1934 – March 11, 2021) was an international Christian evangelist living in the Portland area in Oregon, United States. He was born in Argentina and moved to Portland in his mid-twenties to enroll in a graduate program in Biblical studies.

 

Palau had a long and close relationship with evangelist Billy Graham, and was characterized by many as Graham's successor. "One of the world’s leading evangelical Christian figures,"[1] he was known for his strong appeal to young people, and for his efforts to reach out to secular leaders to address issues like homelessness.

 

In 2007, Palau was estimated to have shared the message of Jesus Christ with 25 million people in 70 nations.[2] Palau's ministry employs 70 people in their headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon and another 25 around the world which include offices in Buenos Aires, Argentina and London, England.[3]

 

In 2018, Palau shared[4] on Facebook and YouTube that he had stage-four lung cancer,[5] which led to his death in March 2021.[6]

 

Early life

Luis Palau Jr. was born November 27, 1934 in Maschwitz, Buenos Aires, Argentina.[7][3] He has five younger sisters and one brother.[3] His father, a construction executive, died when Palau was 10.[8] Within a matter of years after his father's death, due to poor financial management by relatives, Palau, his siblings, and his widowed mother were left nearly destitute. Palau was forced to leave his education at a British-run boarding school and began working as the sole provider for the family at a bank in Córdoba, Argentina.

 

Palau says that he was born again at the age of 12, devoting his life to Christ.

 

Palau first heard Billy Graham on a radio broadcast from Portland, Oregon while still living in Argentina in 1950, and drew inspiration from him. He later worked for Graham as a Spanish translator and as an evangelist. In 1970, Graham contributed the seed money for Palau to start his own ministry, which he modeled after Graham's.[9]

 

Since then, Palau held many large-scale evangelistic festivals and gatherings around the world.

 

Settling in Oregon

Palau arrived in Portland in 1960 to attend a graduate program at Multnomah Bible College,[3] from which he graduated in 1961.[10] His travel and tuition was paid by U.S. benefactors.[8] There he met his wife, Pat, a Beaverton kindergarten teacher, who was a fellow student.[8] They married in 1961 and settled in Cedar Mill, an unincorporated area of the Portland metropolitan area just north of Beaverton.[11] He became a U.S. citizen in 1962.[3][12] The Palaus spent the next eight years serving as missionaries in Mexico and Colombia, before returning to Oregon.[8] After receiving $100,000 as seed money in 1970 from Billy Graham, in quarterly payments of $25,000,[13] Palau worked to build up his ministry in Oregon through the 1970s.

 

In 1975, Palau shared the Bible Expositor post at Eurofest '75 with Bishop Festo Kivengere.[citation needed] Eurofest '75 was co-sponsored by the Billy Graham organisation and was held in Brussels, Belgium, at the Palais du Centenaire and the Heysel Stadium from July 24 until August 2, 1975. In October 1978, the Luis Palau Evangelistic Association, based in Beaverton, was incorporated.[11]

 

Growing local popularity and secular service

 

Palau in 2008

In 1999, a writeup in a Portland weekly newspaper noted that Palau had assembled an 80,000-member audience in "the nation's least-churched major city." It also noted the contrast with the previous large revival, led by an aging Graham, which drew larger numbers but not as many young people as Palau's. Media coverage of Palau's event mentioned Palau as a potential successor to Graham.[10] The annual budget of his ministry was estimated that year at $6 million.[10]

 

His ministry, the Luis Palau Evangelical Association, continued to be based in nearby Beaverton as of 2003. Three of his four sons were working for his ministry at that time.[8]

 

As of 2003, Palau hosted three daily radio programs: an English show carried by 900 stations in 23 countries, and two Spanish programs carried by 880 stations in 25 countries.[3] In that year he was noted for being "at the forefront of efforts to make evangelism more active, contemporary and accessible to a younger audience,"[14] and his ministry's annual budget was estimated at $11 million.[8]

 

In August 2003, Palau mobilized several thousand volunteers from numerous churches to "spruce up" local public schools.[8]

 

In November 2005, Palau visited China, wrapping up a week-long visit by attending a Beijing church service along with U.S. President George W. Bush.[15] He launched a book venture after holding a conversation with a former government Chinese official during his trip to Beijing; Palau launched a book venture based on the transcribed work. The book, now published by Zondervan, is entitled A Friendly Dialogue Between An Atheist and a Christian.[16]

 

Palau made a point of staying out of politics, refusing to endorse ballot measures or candidates. Recently he has partnered with secular leaders as well. Portland Mayor Vera Katz did not attend his first big Portland event in 1999,[10] but her successor, Tom Potter, who is not a churchgoer, approached Palau at a 2005 Portland appearance by First Lady Laura Bush. Potter asked for Palau's assistance in getting other evangelical leaders to address Portland's homelessness problems.[17]

 

Palau got in touch with fellow evangelicals, and cooperated with Portland Commissioner Erik Sten, Potter, Beaverton Mayor Rob Drake, and Gresham Mayor Shane Bemis in 2008 in planning his August 22–23 festival, which focused on volunteerism in support of the homeless. Palau's last Portland event drew about 140,000 people over two days.[18] Palau addressed 500 Christian pastors in March 2008, joined by Portland City Commissioner Sam Adams, in the buildup to the August event. He calls the effort the "Season of Service".[19]

 

In 2013, Palau was residing in Cedar Mill,[20][21] but in late 2018 was residing in nearby Bethany,[22] another unincorporated area also north of Beaverton and immediately west of Cedar Mill. A November 2018 article in the Beaverton Valley Times referred to the Cedar Mill Bible Church as Palau's "home base".[22]

 

In 2015, Palau hosted CityFest, an evangelistic event in New York City that drew 60,000 people to Central Park.[23] This was a year-long effort that involved over 1,700 churches.[1]

 

Illness and death

On January 17, 2018, Palau shared on Facebook and YouTube[4] that he had stage-four lung cancer.[5] In late November 2018, he told a reporter for the Beaverton Valley Times that his cancer had "stabilized for now".[22] His health worsened in early 2021, however, leading to hospitalization in February and a subsequent decision to discontinue treatment.[6]

 

On March 11, 2021, Palau died of lung cancer, in his home, surrounded by family. He was 86.[24][25]

 

Works

Palau wrote numerous books including:

 

Where Is God When Bad Things Happen? ISBN 978-0385492645

Calling America and the Nations to Christ ISBN 978-0785279846

God is Relevant ISBN 978-0385486798

High Definition Life ISBN 978-0800718657

A Friendly Dialogue between an Atheist and a Christian ISBN 978-0-310-28533-5

Movie

A film entitled Palau the Movie was released in 2019. It tells the story of Palau's life and ministry. Starring Gastón Pauls and Alexia Moyano, the film is in color and is 117 minutes long.[26]

 

With affection,

Ruben