Irena Sendler – How She Saved Lives and Kept Them In a Jar

A tutorial on how NOT to be accused of plagiarism on Steemit

Image from Google

I have had a number of people – newbies usually – posting their links on my blogs in comments and replies. I’ve ignored them for the most part, but one yesterday got my attention.

He not only spammed the link to his ‘amazing’ story on one of my blogs, he then went on to do the same to two more of my posts (so far).

Added by edit He's actually spammed that link on 32 posts. Good Grief!

I took exception to this rudeness and I went to have a look.

The post I saw seemed familiar.

This is from my memory, so forgive me if I get some things wrong.

Irene Sendler was overlooked for the Nobel Peace Prize and she died before being properly recognised for her work in the war, rescuing children almost on the same scale as Oskar Schindler (Schindler’s List).

She was 98 when she died and though she wasn’t Jewish by birth or religion, she undertook great risk to help a great many children to escape the Nazi invasion in Poland.

That is what I remember, so the post really was familiar.

Because my voting power is low, I went on a digging mission. I like researching things; I find lots of interesting facts from wandering and meandering through the Google searches (and beyond).

For example, I found this:

http://www.irenasendler.org/facts-about-irena/

Now, if the guy that spammed my wall had looked a little further, and read the site, rather than scalping straight from Wikipedia and re-arranging a few sentences, he’d have got a few facts that I hadn’t recognised and I would have been a little more impressed at his blog.

Here we go then, he challenged me.

yes the description in the start is almost same as that in Wikipedia well tell me how should have i written it? i cant change the fact that she was born somewhere else or she wasn't a social worker or anything else? Do tell?

Here’s mine.

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Irena Krzyżanowska on 15 February 1910 in Warsaw. Her father was a doctor.

Source

Irena’s compassionate nature was obviously learned from her father for he died from Typhus after contracting the disease as he treated patients suffering with it. His colleagues had refused to treat the sick and dying and as a result of his compassion, the Jewish leaders then paid for Irena’s education after he died, in recognition for his work.

I can imagine Irena’s mother telling her tales of her father as she grew up and the little girl, missing her daddy, could only have admired his selflessness and sacrifice.

Irena had more than her father’s spirit to fall back upon, however, her great-grandfather led a rebellion against the Czars. She was bound to be a spirited, fiery person, wasn’t she?

The Warsaw Ghetto became too massive for her to work effectively and she then began to save orphans.

Irena used her papers as a Polish social worker and papers from one of the workers of the Contagious Disease Department (who was a member of the underground Zegota) to enter the Warsaw Ghetto.

Irena and the ten who went with her into the ghetto, used many, many methods to smuggle children out. There were five main means of escape: 1 – using an ambulance a child could be taken out hidden under the stretcher. 2 – escape through the courthouse. 3 – a child could be taken out using the sewer pipes or other secret underground passages. 4 – A trolley could carry out children hiding in a sack, in a trunk, a suitcase or something similar. 5 – if a child could pretend to be sick or was actually very ill, it could be legally removed using the ambulance.

copied directly from the site

Irena kept stringent records of the names of the children she helped to escape and she buried those names in jars. She was the only one to know where the jars were all buried and when she was arrested, it would seem the jars, and therefore the details of those children were lost forever.

Irena was arrested on October 20 – which has since become her nameday.

She was taken to Piawiak Prison where her legs and feet were fractured under torture.

She was sentenced to death and was to be shot.

The executioner had been bribed and she was rescued.

After the war was over, she went and dug up all the jars with the names of the children, who they had been before they were rescued and which families they had been put into care with. She then undertook the massive task of finding the child and helping them to find a living parent.

‘Life in a Jar’ started as a National History Day project in September of 1999. Four students (Megan Stewart, Liz Cambers, Sabrina Coons and Jessica Shelton) began looking for information about Irena Sendler. Mr. Conard had given them a clipping he had found in a 1994 issue of U.S. News and World Report. The mention of Irena was in a story called “Other Schindlers.” Only one web site on the Internet mentioned Irena, it was not until the students visited Poland in 2001 that Irena’s story became known to the world. At last count there were over 500,000 web sites on the Internet mentioning Irena.

Source

Sources:

http://www.auschwitz.dk/sendler.htm

This post has taken perhaps an hour.

The accreditation is there, the sources for the pictures are there. Nothing has been plagiarised because I have quoted my sources.

The original post is here if you want to compare.
Spammed Post

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Yes, I know I'm more of a writer than most, but it really took no time at all and if I had done a little more research and taken a little more time, I'm sure I could have written a LOT more about the wonderful lady.

Here's a tip for the newbies - at least those that have managed to read this far (everything worthwhile is worth waiting for).

Yes, Wikipedia has most facts covered, but that's not the only source of information. Go to Page 2 of the search and see if there's anything more on the subject you're writing about.

THEN, add your own pieces, opinion, a smattering of other facts and figures, ask your audience questions.

That way, not only will you have a well-researched and considered post, you'll have an ORIGINAL piece.

One last thing:

At last count there were over 500,000 web sites on the Internet mentioning Irena.

And all you wanted to do was copy from Wikipedia...