Sendler, Irena (1910-2008), a Polish social worker, saved thousands of Jewish children during World War II (1939-1945). She led a group that smuggled children out of an area known as the Warsaw ghetto. During the war, hundreds of thousands of people died in the Warsaw ghetto or were sent from there to concentration camps.
Sendler was born Irena Krzyżanowska << `kshihzh` uh NAWF skah >> on Feb. 15, 1910, in Warsaw , Poland . She grew up in the town of Otwock, near Warsaw. She studied law and Polish literature at the University of Warsaw. In 1931, she married Mieczysław << MYEHCH uh slawf >> Sendler, a fellow student at the university.
In 1932, Irena Sendler began doing social work at the Free Polish University. She also took a job as a social worker for the Warsaw Social Welfare Department. She was 29 years old when Germany invaded Poland, beginning World War II. In 1940, Nazi officials sectioned off part of Warsaw to create what became known as the Warsaw ghetto—the largest of the many ghettoes set up throughout Eastern Europe. Jews were placed in the ghetto and were required to stay within its walls. Food was scarce in the ghetto, and poor sanitary conditions caused frequent outbreaks of disease.
In 1942, Sendler joined the Council for Aid to Jews, a secret organization known by its code name, Żegota. Sendler was made head of Żegota’s children division, and she was given the code name Jolanta << yoh LAHN tuh >> . As a city worker, Sendler had special clearance to enter and exit the ghetto. She used forged papers that listed her as a nurse to get additional privileges. Sendler used these privileges to begin smuggling Jewish children out of the ghetto to safety. This task became especially critical as the Nazis began sending Jewish families from ghettoes to concentration camps.
Sendler and other Żegota members used a wide variety of methods to get children out of the ghetto. They helped children escape through the sewer system and through secret underground passages. They hid children in trunks, garbage sacks, and other containers and carried them out. Sometimes, they hid children under stretchers and removed them by ambulance. Another common method was to train children to pretend to be Christians. Then, Sendler or another Żegota member would take them into a courthouse or a church that was on the border of the ghetto, disguise them, and escort them through the building exit that led outside the ghetto.
Once children were outside the ghetto, Sendler arranged for them to be taken to host families or orphanages that were willing to disguise and harbor (hide and protect) them. The children were given new names and forged identity papers. Sendler wrote their real names on scraps of paper and placed them in glass jars for safekeeping. She buried the jars under an apple tree in the backyard of a friend’s house in Warsaw.
In 1943, the Gestapo, Nazi Germany’s secret police force, raided Sendler’s apartment and arrested her. They took her to Pawiak << PAHV yahk >> prison in Warsaw, where they tortured her. They broke her feet and legs, and sentenced her to death. On her way to the firing squad, Sendler was able to escape. Another member of Żegota had successfully bribed a German prison guard. Though she got away, Sendler’s name remained on the list of people who had been executed that day.
After escaping execution, Sendler lived in hiding, but she continued to help rescue children. When the war was over, she dug up the glass jars and began locating the children she had saved and their families, so they could be reunited. She discovered that most of the children’s families had died at the Treblinka death camp. In her later years, Sendler said, “When you know that something is basically at stake, like real life, you do everything to save it. You don’t talk about it and discuss it. You do it.” Sendler helped save about 2,500 children.
In 1947, Sendler divorced her husband and married her longtime friend Stefan Zgrzembski, a Jewish lawyer. In 1965, the Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial center, recognized Sendler as one of the “Righteous Among the Nations” for taking risks to help Jews during the Holocaust . In 2003, she was awarded the Order of the White Eagle, Poland’s highest civilian honor. She was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. Sendler died on May 12, 2008.
