Irena Sendler
Another recipient of the Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem was Irena Sendler. Irena was born into a Catholic home on 15th February 1910 in Otwock, a town about 15 miles from Poland’s capital Warsaw. There was a Jewish community living there and her father, a doctor, treated many of them for free as they could not pay for his care. He died of typhus when Irena was only 7 years old. His influence, although brief in human years, was to last a lifetime. He had taught her to respect Jews and to help anyone that needed help.
Irena trained and was employed as a social worker for the Department of Social Welfare and Public Health of the City of Warsaw. Germany invaded Poland in September 1939 and in October 1940 began to segregate Jews into a 16-block area that came to be known as the Warsaw Ghetto. The Ghetto was sealed and the Jewish families ended up behind its walls, only to await certain death. It was estimated that in total, there were 1,000 ghettos set up all over Poland during World War II, Warsaw was by far the largest, holding around 440,000 Jews.
German commanders were afraid of a typhus epidemic spreading to their guards and so they allowed certain health workers into the Ghetto to manage the spread. Irena’s job gave her access, and in time she would use this to great advantage.
As she worked, she saw orphaned children beg on the streets, she heard of parents being taken away to work camps, she wondered what she could do to help the children survive. She knew the only way to guarantee their safety and their future was to get them out of the Ghetto.
She began working with the Polish Council for Aid of the Jews, Zegota, forging ID cards and finding Catholic homes for the children outside of the Ghetto. Then, along with others, she started smuggling them out. As with many things of that nature, they had to be careful, not to use the same methods over and over. Some were taken out in ambulances, babies were given a sedative and carried out in boxes, some children were moved via the sewers below and some via the Courthouse, which had one entrance into the Ghetto and another out the Aryan side of the city.
Irena would approach parents with the offer of saving their children from the Ghetto. But it came with a cost. She couldn’t smuggle the parents out, so it would mean separation for an indefinite period of time.
Take a moment to imagine how hard it was for mothers and fathers to send their children away.
To perhaps never see them again. It required a lot of courage on their behalf to let them go.
Many parents worried that they would lose their Jewish identity. To protect the children, Irena taught them to say the Lord’s Prayer and the sign of the cross in case any German guard would test them.
Irena made a promise to the parents that she would keep track of where the children were going, their new Christian name and the family that they were placed with. Knowing that if the information was ever discovered by the Germans, everyone listed would be at risk, Irena wrote this information down on a piece of paper, tore it out of the book, folded it up and placed it in a jar. She hid the jar beneath an apple tree in her garden near her home so that if the house was raided, the information would not be found.
German intelligence did catch up with Irena, or Jolanta, her code name in the Resistance, and she was taken from her home. She was beaten, her legs broken as the Germans tortured her for information. She did not give in. After three months of interrogation, she was sentenced to be executed, however a bribe arranged by Zegota allowed her to flee and she survived.
After the war, the jars were retrieved and attempts were made to try and relocate the children back to their own families however many of the adults had been taken to Treblinka concentration camp and were killed.
Irena’s story was largely unknown until 1999 when a group of American students researched her as part of a history project and wrote a play, Life in a Jar.
They came across a newspaper article that said she had saved 2,500 children from the Jewish Ghetto.
They thought it was a typo so continued to research. Assuming she was dead, they searched for her burial record only to find out that she was alive and still living in Warsaw. They fundraised and visited Irena in Poland who told them more about her experience. She shared how, decades later, she still had nightmares about what she witnessed.
Irena passed away on 12th May 2008, at the age of 98. Her determination to save as many children as she could from the Warsaw Ghetto and her incredible acts of courage, remains a true inspiration.
WHY NOT WATCH the film The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler which you can currently watch for free on Amazon Prime.
