Hello
everyone! Today I learned about a very amazing lady who made a huge
difference during World War II and hadn't even been heard of until
about 18 years ago! Her name is Irena Sendler, born Irena Krzyanowski
in February of 1910 to her doctor father and his wife. Her father
passed away due to typhus after treating some patients no other
doctor would treat because they were afraid of catching the disease.
Many of those patients were Jewish and as a thank you for her
father's service, the Jewish community got together and paid for
Irena to go to college.
When
at school, Irena saw they had a ghetto bench system in place, which I
had to look up to find the meaning. Apparently, before World War II,
Jewish students were forced to sit in a segragated section of the
lecture hall on the left or face expulsion. Irena was agianst this so
she defaced her grade card and was subsequently suspended from her
university for three years.
Irena
moved to Warsaw before the start of World War II and she started
working for Social Welfare departments at the municipal level.
Shortly after the German invasion she began to aid the poor and
destitute Jews. She was unable to continue her work when the Germans
forced the Jews into a ghetto. But she found a way to get past this.
With
the help of her coworkers, they created 3,000 fake documents in order
to continue to help the Jews. The group knew that if they were caught
assisting the Jews, they would be put to death, but they believed so
strongly in justice and freedom that they put their lives as
secondary to the people they would help.
There
was an underground organization called the Council to Aid Jews and
they made Irena, code name Jolanta, as the leader of the children's
section. Since Irena was a social worker she was able to get access
to the ghetto in order to check up on any disease that might be
there. Under this guise, she and her coworkers smuggled out many
Jewish children.
They
had many ways to get the children out. “She
and her friends smuggled the children out in boxes, suitcases, sacks
and coffins, sedating babies to quiet their cries. Some were spirited
away through a network of basements and secret passages. Operations
were timed to the second. One of Sendler’s children told of waiting
by a gate in darkness as a German soldier patrolled nearby. When the
soldier passed, the boy counted to 30, then made a mad dash to the
middle of the street, where a manhole cover opened and he was taken
down into the sewers and eventually to safety.”
Irena
was arrested in 1943 but before she was caught she managed to put the
names of all the children she saved into glass jars in her friend's
garden. And she also secreted away money to help the The Germans
tortured her, questioning her for the names of her fellows, she never
gave in. She and the other women would make holes in the German's
underwear while on prison laundry duty. The Germans found out and
shot every other woman. She lived. She was still sentenced to death
but her people bribed a German officer to let her go and so there
were signs everywhere that she was to be shot. She lived again.
In
spite of the threats of her death, she didn't stop her important
work. She was thought to be exectuted so she tried not to be seen.
Even before the Zegota movement started, Irena had been helping
Jewish families and they estimate she saved about 3,00 Polish Jews.
When
the war finally ended, Irena dug up the jars. She had hoped to
reunite families after all this time but unforutunately, many of the
family members had been gassed. So the children she saved went to be
adopted either by Polish families or they went to Israel.
Though
she had been recoginized by the Polish people, the rest of the world
knew nothing about her. Until in 1999 when some students from Kansas
were given a newspaper clipping by their teacher about Irena and only
one website had any mention of Irena. The children went on to learn
all about her, even traveling to Poland and writing her when they
learned she was still alive in 2000. The children put on a
presentation called Life in a Jar which shares the life story of
Irena.
I'm
glad that I was able to learn about her and the amazing work she did.
Thanks to some kids in Kansas, there are tons of websites that talk
about Irena and give her the fame she deserves. She passed away in
2008.
Sources:
Life
in a Jar: The Irena Sendler Project
Wikipedia
: Irene Sendler
Vashem,
Yad “Women of Valor” Stories of Women Who Rescued Jews During the
Holocaust – Irena Sandler 2018
Snopes
Irena Sandler, supposedly a candidate for the 2007 Nobel Peace
Prize, is credited by saving 2,500 Polish Jews from the Holocaust
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