IRENA SENDLER
Introduction
Irena Sendler, also referred to as Irena Sendlerowa in Poland, nom de guerre “Jolanta” was a Polish nurse, humanitarian and social worker who served in the Polish Underground in German-occupied Warsaw during World War II, and was head of the children’s section of Żegota, the Polish Council to Aid Jews, which was active from 1942 to 1945.
Assisted by some two dozen other Żegota members, Sendler smuggled approximately 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto and then provided them with false identity documents and shelter outside the Ghetto, saving those children from the Holocaust. With the exception of diplomats who issued visas to help Jews flee Nazi-occupied Europe, Sendler saved more Jews than any other individual during the Holocaust.
Amply
Sendler moved to Warsaw prior to the outbreak of World War II, and worked for municipal Social Welfare departments. She began aiding Jews soon after the German invasion in 1939, by leading a group of co-workers who created more than 3,000 false documents to help Jewish families. This work was done at huge risk, as — since October 1941 — giving any kind of assistance to Jews in German-occupied Poland was punishable by death, not just for the person who was providing the help but also for their entire family or household. Poland was the only country in German-occupied Europe in which such a death penalty was applied.
In August 1943, Sendler, by then known by her nom de guerre Jolanta, was nominated by Żegota, the underground organization also known as the Council to Aid Jews, to head its Jewish children’s section. As an employee of the Social Welfare Department, she had a special permit to enter the Warsaw Ghetto to check for signs of typhus, a disease the Germans feared would spread beyond the Ghetto. During these visits, she wore a Star of David as a sign of solidarity with the Jewish people. Under the pretext of conducting inspections of sanitary conditions within the Ghetto, Sendler and her co-workers smuggled out babies and small children, sometimes in ambulances and trams, sometimes hiding them in packages and suitcases, and using various other means.
Jewish children were placed with Polish families, the Warsaw orphanage of the Sisters of the Family of Mary, or Roman Catholic convents such as the Little Sister Servants of the Blessed Virgin Mary Conceived Immaculate. Sendler worked closely with a group of about 30 volunteers, mostly women, who included Zofia Kossak-Szczucka, a resistance fighter and writer, and Matylda Getter, Mother Provincial of the Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary.
According to American historian Debórah Dwork, Sendler was “the inspiration and the prime mover for the whole network that saved those 2,500 Jewish children.” About 400 of the children were directly smuggled out by Sendler herself. She and her co-workers buried lists of the hidden children in jars in order to keep track of their original and new identities. The aim was to return the children to their original families when the war was over.
In 1943 Sendler was arrested by the Gestapo and severely tortured. The Gestapo beat her brutally, fracturing her feet and legs in the process. Despite this, she refused to betray any of her comrades or the children they rescued, and was sentenced to death by firing squad. Żegota saved her life by bribing the guards on the way to her execution. After her escape, she hid from the Germans, but returned to Warsaw under a fake name and continued her involvement with the Żegota. During the Warsaw Uprising, she worked as a nurse in a public hospital, where she hid five Jews. She continued to work as a nurse until the Germans left Warsaw, retreating before the advancing Soviet troops.
After the war, she and her co-workers gathered all of the children’s records with the names and locations of the hidden Jewish children and gave them to their Żegota colleague Adolf Berman and his staff at the Central Committee of Polish Jews. However, almost all of the children’s parents had been killed at the Treblinka extermination camp or had gone missing.
Irena Sendler lived in Warsaw for the rest of her life. She died on 12 May 2008, at the age of 98, and was buried in Warsaw’s Powązki Cemetery.
“Every child saved with my help is the justification of my existence on this Earth, and not a title to glory.” (Irena Sendler)