About

Irena Sendler (1910-2008)

Irena Sendler was a social worker and nurse in the Warsaw Department of Public Health and Social Services in the 1930’s. Her position authorized her to go in and out of the Warsaw Ghetto after it was sealed in November 1940. Her department was responsible for controlling the spread of infectious diseases. Close to 400,000 Jews were crowded into cramped quarters with limited rations and rampant disease. Even the Nazis were terrified of being infected with typhus and other diseases.

The underground organization, Zegota, helped Jews escape the ghetto and provided for their physical needs once they had gone into hiding. By 1942, some 60,000 Jews were hidden in the Aryan area of Warsaw.

Irena joined Zegota using “Jolanta” as her nom de guerre. She worked with many other dedicated men and women including Ala Golab-Grynberg, chief nurse within the Warsaw Ghetto. They smuggled food, typhus medicine and money into the ghetto. And Irena smuggled young Jewish children out, hiding them in her cart. Living arrangements would then be found for these children with willing Polish families, Catholic convents and other places of refuge.

Much of this smuggling was through tunnels in the basements of the courthouse on Leszno Street and All Saints Catholic Church which straddled the ghetto. Irena and Ala created a streetcar scheme in which they hid children in packages or suitcases left under a seat by Ala and then picked up by Irena further along the streetcar line. Sendler and her colleagues are known to have saved at least 2,500 young children. She kept records of both their Jewish and Christian names so that after the war the children could hopefully be returned to their biological parents, if they survived.

She wrote their names on thin cigarette paper, placing these many bits of paper into jars, and burying the jars in the garden outside her apartment.

Sendler was arrested by the Nazis in October 1943 and was sentenced to death. Beaten mercilessly in prison, she never broke and did not reveal any vital information. Fortunately, Zegota bribed German officials to have her released.

She survived the war and lived to age 98. In 1965, Irena Sendler was recognized by Yad Vashem as one of the Polish Righteous Among the Nations.