Irena Krzyzanowska was born in Poland on February 15, 1910. She was raised by her Catholic parents to respect and love people regardless of their ethnic background or social status. Her father, a physician, died from typhus in 1917. He was the only doctor in who would treat the poor Jewish victims of this tragic disease. He told seven-year-old Irena, "If you see someone drowning you must try to rescue them, even if you cannot swim." In 1939 the Nazis swept through Poland and imprisoned the Jews in ghettos, where they were first starved and finally murdering them in killing camps. Irena was a...