This appeared in my e-mail inbox last week and was verified by snopes.com. With all the talk about the importance of green living, I thought my three readers would find this interesting:

Recently a 98-year-old lady named Irena died. During World War II, Irena got permission to work in the Warsaw Ghetto, as a plumbing/sewer specialist.

She had an ulterior motive. Being German, she knew what the Nazis’ plans were for the Jews.

Irena smuggled infants out in the bottom of the toolbox she carried, and she carried in the back of her truck a burlap sack for larger kids.

She also had a dog in the back that she trained to bark when the Nazi soldiers let her in and out of the ghetto. The soldiers, of course, wanted nothing to do with the dog and the barking covered the kids’/infants’ noise. She managed to smuggle out and save 2,500 kids/infants.

She was caught and the Nazis broke both her legs and arms and beat her severely. Irena kept a record of the names of all the kids she smuggled out and kept them in a glass jar, buried under a tree in her backyard.

After the war, she tried to locate any parents that may have survived it and reunited the family. Most, though, had been gassed. Those kids she helped got placed into foster family homes or adopted.

Last year Irena was up for the Nobel Peace Prize. She was not selected.

Al Gore won — for a slide show on global warming.