Madri e padri senza figli: Irena Sendler, Janus Korczak ed altri exempla di pedagogia della resilienza e della resistenza nella Shoah

Abstract

Among the countless interpretations through which we can re-read and re-consider the historical experience of the Shoah, the theme of the family appears evidently salient. In any phase and moment of the anti-Semitic persecution, the process and the project of dehumanization of the Jews, deployed to progressively carry out the genocide, relied on the forced and violent disintegration of parental ties. In the unspeakability of the Shoah, stories of resistance and resilience emerge. They represent exempla for pedagogical and educational action, with moral fathers or mothers whose sole intent is to protect childhood, even at cost, as in the case of Irena Sendler, to build paths for the removal of boys and girls from their families and reunification "projects" based on a hope that, albeit faint, allows the resisting intentions of its actors to act. The article will offer a portrait of Irena Sendler, the Polish social worker who in the Warsaw Ghetto manages to save the lives of thousands of girls and boys by removing them, with the help of the Polish resistance, from her parents.