Irena SENDLER (1910–2008)

Irena Sendler, née Krzyżanowska, was born in Warsaw, Poland, the only child of Janina and Dr. Stanislaw Krzyżanowski, a physician, and grew up in Otwock.

Her father died from typhus, which he contracted while treating patients, when Irena was seven years old. Afterwards, many in the Jewish community helped to fund her education. She studied Polish literature at Warsaw University, where she disagreed with policies that discriminated against Jews, and was given a three-year suspension. In 1931, Irena married Mieczysław Sendler, and the couple moved to Warsaw. At the start of World War II, as Nazi Germany invaded her homeland, she began to assist the city's Jews, providing food, water, medicine, and clothing. However, once the Warsaw Ghetto was built in 1940, her access to those who needed her help was cut off. She then started to plan other ways in which to help.

Irena persuaded families to let her smuggle children out of the Ghetto, using her status as a social worker and documents obtained from the underground group Zegota (Committee for Aid to Jews, established 1942). Irena was appointed the head of Zegota's children’s division. It is estimated that Irena and her team helped rescue about 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto.
Those rescued were sent to various orphanages and religious institutions that took in Jewish children under false names.

On October 20, 1943, Irena was arrested by the Nazis and sent to Piawiak prison, where she was tortured for information and sentenced to death. However, her fellow Zegota members bribed workers in the prison to let her escape.

Irena went into hiding for the rest of the war. Once it was over, she dug up the many small jars she and Zegota members had buried in a garden with detailed records and lists of the children and their real identities, so that she could try to connect them with their families. After the war, Irena continued her career as a social worker. She received numerous awards for her work as a Holocaust rescuer, included Yad Vashem’s Righteous Among the Nations, the Jan Karski Courage to Care Award, and Poland’s Order of the White Eagle. The story of her life was told in a 2009 television film called The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler.