This is the story of Irena Sendler, a Polish social worker, nurse and humanitarian who defied the Nazis and secretly saved 2,500 children from the Warsaw Ghetto.
Irena Sendler was born in 1910 to a Polish Catholic family. She was 29 years old when WWII broke out and worked for the Social Welfare Department in Warsaw. As a social worker, Sendler had access to the Warsaw Ghetto, where she was committed to helping those in need. Knocking on the doors of Jewish families, she persuaded parents to trust her with their children’s lives in a desperate plan to save them.
For two years, she smuggled hundreds of children out of the ghetto using potato sacks, boxes, and even coffins. Once safely out, the children were given shelter in orphanages, convents, and non-Jewish homes, along with new identity papers.
Sendler kept meticulous records of the children’s real names, which she buried in jars in her backyard, hoping to reunite them with their families after the war.
In 1943, she was caught, tortured, and sentenced to death by the Gestapo but managed to escape with the help of Polish resistance fighters. Despite her capture, she never revealed the names or locations of those she had saved.
After the war, Irena recovered the jars and began reuniting the children with surviving family members. Tragically, many of the families had been murdered in the Holocaust.
In 1965, Irena Sendler was recognized as Righteous Among the Nations and died in Warsaw in 2008 at the age of 98. She never sought recognition for her heroism and leaves behind a legacy of extraordinary bravery and humanity.
