From today’s news:

Irena Sendler, a Polish woman who saved thousands of Jewish children during World War Two by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto, died in the Polish capital on Monday after a long illness, local media said.

[snip]

Yad Vashem chairman Avner Shalev said: “Irena Sendler’s courageous activities rescuing Jews during the Holocaust serve as a beacon of light to the world, inspiring hope and restoring faith in the innate goodness of mankind.”

Using her position as a social worker, Sendler regularly entered the ghetto, smuggling around 2,500 children out in boxes, suitcases or hidden in trolleys.

The children were then placed with Polish families outside the ghetto, created by Nazi Germany in 1940 for the city’s half a million strong Jewish population, and given new identities.

But in 1943 Sendler, who led the children’ section of the Zegota organization which helped Jews during the war, was arrested and tortured by the Gestapo.

She only escaped execution when Zegota managed to bribe some Nazi officials, who left her unconscious but alive with broken legs and arms in the woods.

In America, we think of historical Europe as a place were voiceless mastered were ruled by high-handed aristocrats. We assume that those days are over, wiped away by war, revolution, and the simple passage of time. The European Union, however, periodically provides timely reminders that Europe is still ruled by high-handed authoritarian figures who ignore the masses, ostensibly for the latters’ “own good.” As it happens, this new aristocracy isn’t one of blood, though; it’s a political class made up of well-attired Leftists:

European Union countries agreed in Lisbon to approve the union’s new constitution Wednesday, and today Denmark’s parliament is expected to do the same, reports Politiken newspaper.

The news was released via the Liberal Party’s newsletter and indicated a majority of political parties are ready to ratify the treaty for Denmark. There was no press release or conference held for the move, which will effectively put an end to any possibility for a referendum.

Many experts had previously expressed their belief that a majority of Danes might vote against the treaty if a referendum were held. Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, a staunch supporter of the EU treaty, will now be spared any difficulties from such an occurrence.

The original treaty was recalled for revision three years ago, after referenda in the Netherlands and France voted against ratification. But experts also say that Denmark’s current move to ratify the treaty without a public vote goes against tradition and poses a democratic problem.

‘Politicians with the “yea” parties have an obligation to put the treaty debate up for discussion,’ said Marlene Wind, head of the University of Copenhagen’s Centre for European Politics. ‘They haven’t done that, and now their failure to get the EU issue on the agenda almost looks like a scandal.’

And if you wonder why I accuse these new tyrants of being Leftists, look at who is defending this move that will destroy individual freedoms around Europe:

Michael Aastrup Jensen, the Liberal Party’s EU spokesperson, denied that the treaty was slipped in behind the public’s back.

‘All of us in parliament agreed that this was the most talked about treaty ever,’ he said. ‘We’ve had hearings, written blogs and debated it on our homepages, and there’s been over 500 formal parliamentary questions put to the government about it. So I’m not buying the claim that this has been done in silence.’

Note how talking about it is, in Jensen’s mind, just as good as actually letting the little people vote on the damned thing.

If you’d like more information about the new European aristocracy, one as cavalier of the “little people’s” rights as the old one, and one that is every bit as damaging, you should read three books:

Mark Steyn’s America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It

Bruce Bawer’s While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within

Melanie Phillips’ Londonistan

And while I’m on the subject of Europe, a word about Poland, a country that continues to distinguish itself in the post-War era with a social conscience that other countries should envy and would do well to copy.  In today’s Warsaw Voice, there is a moving article about the April 15 ceremonies honoring the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto, an act of staggering courage that the Polish President Lech Kaczyński beautifully describes:

“World War II witnessed a lot of heroic deeds,” Kaczyński said. “But the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising stands out even amongst heroic deeds. The ghetto insurgents weren’t fighting for victory but for honor. They resolved to fight in what was a hopeless situation. Living conditions in the ghetto are best summed up by the fact that 100,000 of the initial 450,000 people sent here died from hunger, disease and German oppression within a year,” the president said, referring to the Nazis cramming 450,000 people into an area of less than four square kilometers in the spring of 1941.  (Emphasis mine.)

A speech such as this one constantly reminds us that Europe, like all countries, manages to encompass the best of man and the worst of man.  I can only up that in the upcoming and inevitable culture war between Europe and the radical Islamists the European elitists have invited in, a humane, but strong, Europe emerges, one that is willing to fight honorably the the continuation of a civilized, pluralistic Western culture, rather than the dark side of Europe, one that gleefully slaughters those it classifies as lesser and different.