TV movie featuring Sendler's story to premiere April 15

Downtown Fort Scott will be the site of a Hollywood-style movie premiere next month.

The world premiere of the Hallmark Hall of Fame film, "The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler," which tells the story of the Polish-born heroine and social worker who rescued 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II, will take place at 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 15, at the Liberty Theatre, 113 S. Main St.

Tickets for the event, which are free of charge, have been highly sought-after by the public since the announcement late last week that the event would be conducted in Fort Scott, according to Norm Conard, the director of the Lowell Milken Center and one of the founders of the student-driven "Life in a Jar" project that focuses on Sendler's life and heroic efforts.

"We had 150 reservations by Saturday morning," Conard said. "There's a lot of interest in it."

While Sendler's story has drawn the interest of news and media outlets across the nation and the globe over the last decade, the Hallmark-produced film will mark the first time that her story has been used as the basis for a feature film. A few documentaries about Sendler and the "Life in a Jar" project have been produced in Europe, Conard said.

The Hallmark Hall of Fame movie, which was filmed in Latvia in northern Europe, will air on television on the CBS Network on April 19.

The film stars Anna Paquin as Sendler; Marcia Gay Harden as Sendler's mother, Janina; Nathaniel Parker as Dr. Majkowski, the head of Warsaw's Department of Health who helped Sendler obtain important resources for her mission; and Goran Visnijic as Stefan, a former university friend of Sendler who was Jewish and with whom Sendler fell in love with when she began her clandestine work in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Sendler's story was discovered in 1999 by a group of Uniontown High School students, who wrote and performed a dramatic stage play about Sendler for a National History Day project that year. Since then, Sendler's story has been seen and heard globally, and the "Life in a Jar" play has been performed in the U.S. and around the world by more than 30 students from rural high schools across the country. More than 60 schools in Poland have performed similar presentations over the years, Conard said.

"We freely share the story," he said. "The past 10 years has been a passion for the students."

Sendler, who worked as a social worker in the early 1940s, created and led a conspiracy of women who moved in and out of Warsaw's Jewish Ghetto disguised as nurses employed by Warsaw's Health Department. Working under the guise of merely attempting to prevent and contain the spread of Typhus and Spotted Fever, Sendler and her cohorts emerged each time with the children of consenting Jewish parents.

The children were sometimes sedated and hidden inside boxes, suitcases and coffins as a means of rescuing them from their imminent deportation to death camps. They were given new identities and placed with Polish families and in convents. Sendler kept a hidden record of their birth names and where they were placed buried in jars with the hope that they would someday be reunited with their own families.

The Nazis discovered Sendler's ruse in 1943 and arrested her. She was tortured by Gestapo agents and suffered broken feet. On the day of her scheduled execution, she was rescued by "Zegota," the underground network which she worked with to save the Jewish children. Sendler, who was nominated in 2007 for a Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts, died in May 2008 at the age of 98.

Conard said he expects Hallmark representatives, as well as original and current "Life in a Jar" cast members to appear at the April premiere in Fort Scott. Before that screening, some of those cast members will also be attending the film's industry premiere on April 13 in California, Conard said.

"It's a very exciting event going on in Fort Scott," he said. "It's a joy for the Bourbon County area, for this to occur here in Fort Scott."

A statement from the Fort Scott Area Chamber of Commerce said that Hallmark movie executives "are very excited to be having the world premiere in Fort Scott."

Light refreshments will be served prior to the film's screening at the Liberty Theatre. Doors of the theater will open at 6:30 p.m., with the film starting at 7 p.m. Seating for the event is very limited, so reservations should be made as soon as possible, a chamber statement said.

For tickets, call the Lowell Milken Center at (620) 223-9991.