Irena Sendler: Hero of the Holocaust

Newspaper story about Sendler's death.

Irena Sendler was a humble hero during one of the darkest times in the history of humanity. During the Holocaust, this woman saved more than two thousand children and infants from certain death in the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland. She did this at great personal risk, a risk that came very close to being made a reality. She is among the bravest and most selfless individuals in the pages of history, throughout the world. It took a rare person to boldly stand up to the Nazis. It took an exceptionally rare person to do so knowing that if they did not, they would have nothing to fear from them. Irena Sendler was the latter sort of person.

Irena Sendler was born into a Roman Catholic family just fifteen miles away from Warsaw, Poland in 1910. Her father was a physician who had poor Jewish people among his patients. Therefore, Irena Sendler was taught to be kind to the less fortunate from a very early age. Her father died when she was still young, but Irena never forgot the lessons he taught her.

Irena Sendler was about 29 years old when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939. At the time that the invasion occurred, Irena was employed as a social worker and was in charge of running some canteens in her area. Canteens were programs that delivered food, money and more to the needy. Irena arranged so that Jews could also get assistance from this public program. She would have them register with assumed Christian names. She would also ensure that the Jewish families who were obtaining these services were reported as having communicable diseases so that the Nazis would not inspect their homes and find them out.

The moving of nearly 500,000 Jews into what would become known as the Warsaw Ghetto began in 1942. Irena Sendler was a naturally sympathetic person and wanted to help as much as she could. She became a member of the Zegota, an underground resistance movement. Her focus was rescuing Jewish children from the ghetto and removing them to safe havens. She managed to obtain a pass to enter the ghetto from the Epidemic Control Department. She went every day, using the name Jolanta, with goods such as food and medicine to deliver to the ‘residents’ there.

With the help of like-minded people in the Social Welfare Department, Irena Sendler was able to begin smuggling children out of the ghetto. She was able to obtain forged documents, giving the freed children new Christian identities so that they could be kept elsewhere. As far as getting the children out of the ghetto, she did this in any way possible. Children were taken out in body bags, coffins, in trucks filled with goods, gunnysacks and more. She was even able to get others to help her, such as an ambulance driver and a mechanic.

Many of the children that were removed from the Warsaw Ghetto were taken into convents and orphanages.  Others were taken in by Christian families. Irena sometimes found it difficult to convince parents that their children would be safer without them, outside of the ghetto. She sympathized with these parents’ feeling of loss and so she kept meticulous records of each child she removed and was sure to include their real and assumed identities. She planned on reuniting the children with their families after World War II had ended.

On October 20, 1943, Irena Sendler’s deception was uncovered by the Gestapo. They arrested her and broke both of her legs and feet while torturing her for information. Though the wounds they inflicted were enough to cripple Irena for life, she never betrayed the name of a single one of her associates or any of the children that she had rescued. She was sentenced to die, but was rescued by the Zegota. One of their agents bribed a guard, who then released her. Unbelievably, Irena went right back to helping Jewish children, under a new identity, even though she was pursued by the Gestapo. 

When the war was finally over, Irena Sendler retrieved all of the records that she had kept of the children’s names. She had kept them hidden in jars that were buried beneath a tree in her neighbor’s yard. In all, there were roughly 2,500 names on her lists. She did the best she could to reunite each and every child with their family, but unfortunately many of their families had been wiped out during the Holocaust.

Irena Sendler died on May 12, 2008. She was ninety-eight years old. Before her death, she was given a number of distinctions and awards. In 1965 she was given the title “Righteous Among the Nations” by the Yad Vashem organization. In 1991 she was made an honorary citizen of Israel. In 2003, she was awarded the “Order of White Eagle” in Poland. Again in 2003, she won Jankarski’s award for Valor and Courage. In 2007, she was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Surprisingly, the award was given to Al Gore for his global warming message rather than Sendler.

Sources

Irena Sendler, retrieved 1/5/10, auschwitz.dk/Sendler.htm

In her safe arms, the innocents survived, retrieved 1/4/10, smh.com.au/news/world/in-her-safe-arms-the-innocents-survived/2008/05/13/121044435389.html