Irena Sendler

Social worker, humanitarian

• Born: February 15, 1910
• Birthplace: Warsaw, Poland
• Died: May 12, 2008
• Place of death: Warsaw, Poland

Education: University of Warsaw

Significance: Irena Sendler was a Roman Catholic social worker who helped rescue thousands of Jewish children from the Warsaw ghetto and move them to places of safety during the German Nazi occupation of Poland in the early 1940s.

Background

Irena Sendler was born Irena Krzyżanowska on February 15, 1910, in Warsaw, Poland, to Janina Krzyżanowska and Stanislaw Krzyżanowski. Her family moved to the small town of Otwock when she was two. There her father, a physician, opened a sanatorium and was active with aid societies. She grew up in a home marked by openness and acceptance of all people. Her father was one of the few physicians in the area who would treat Jewish patients. He taught Sendler that people were either good or bad and their nature was independent of their race, nationality, or religion; and if she saw someone in need, she should help. These principles later inspired her to risk her life to help save thousands.

After her father’s death, Sendler and her mother moved to Tarczyn. There Sendler attended the Helena Trzcinska Gymnasium. She passed her end-of-school exam in 1927 and enrolled in the University of Warsaw. She wanted to work in the field of social work, but as there was no appropriate training program at the university. She initially studied law and then switched to Polish literature. She received her master’s degree in 1939.

Humanitarian Work

In 1932, Sendler began working in the mothers and children division of the Citizens’ Social Aid Committee. At the time, the section was infused with the ideology that social work was not just a profession but a way to effect social change and end social discrimination. After it closed in 1935, Sendler was hired by the city of Warsaw in the Welfare Assistance Department where she was responsible for providing services to the people.

After the Germans invaded Warsaw in September 1939, Sendler and several of her coworkers banded together to provide unofficial aid to Jewish people. By October 1941, conditions had worsened. All Jews were living in a walled-in ghetto and were forbidden to leave, and the Germans declared that helping any Jewish person was a crime under penalty of death. Sendler persuaded city officials to allow her to enter the ghetto to help prevent the spread of infectious diseases. She received a special permit, and under the guise of being a nurse, she smuggled in clothing, money, medicines, food, and false documents. She also began to smuggle people out of the ghetto and move them to places of safety.

Her secret activities came to the attention of a group formed by the exiled Polish government, the Council to Aid Jews, or Żegota. They contacted Sendler and she became the head of the children’s division. With greater resources than Sendler and her small cell had been able to muster on their own, Sendler was able to smuggle more people out of the ghetto.

Using a variety of methods, such as underground tunnels; hiding children on vehicles, in boxes, or in caskets; and bribing officials to look the other way, Sendler smuggled around 2,500 children out of the Warsaw ghetto. The children were given new, Christian sounding names, false papers, and were moved to an orphanage, convent, or the home of a sympathetic family. She recorded on slips of paper each child’s Jewish name, their parents’ name, and the child’s new Polish name so the children could be provided for and their welfare could be monitored. The information was also to be used to reunite the children with their families after the war.

In October 1943, Sendler was arrested and imprisoned in Pawiak Prison. The pages of information on each child were never found when she was arrested, and despite being tortured, she refused to reveal any information about her activities or co-conspirators. She was sentenced to die but was spared after Żegota members bribed a guard who helped her escape but kept her name on the executed list so it appeared that she was dead. When she returned home, she recovered the lists of children’s names and stuffed the papers in a glass jar and buried the jar under a tree in a friend’s yard. Sendler then spent the rest of the war in hiding under an assumed name while continuing her underground activities.

After the war she dug up her jar and tried to reunite families, but most had died in Nazi concentration camps. She continued to live in Poland, working as a social worker. She was often harassed by the new Communist government for her former participation with the exiled Polish government.

In 1965 Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, awarded Sendler with a Righteous Among the Nations medal. She was not able to receive the medal until 1983 when she was finally granted a passport and could travel to Israel.

Sendler came to the world’s attention in 2000 after four students in the United States wrote a play called Life in a Jar about her life. In 2003 Poland awarded her the Order of the White Eagle. She was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 and again in 2007.

Impact

Sendler saved over two thousand Jewish children from death during World War II. While many of the children she smuggled out of the Warsaw ghetto were unaware of her role in their rescue, others were grateful for her actions. All were given a chance to live and give life to future generations.

Personal Life

Sendler married Mieczysław Sendler in 1931. They divorced following the war, and Sendler later married Stefan Zgrzembski. Sendler and Zgrzembski had two sons and a daughter. One son died in infancy, and the other, Adam, died in 1999. At the time of Sendler’s death in 2008, she was survived by her daughter Janina and a granddaughter.

Bibliography

Dastych, David M. “Irena Sendler: Compassion and Courage.” Canada Free Press. Canada Free Press, 26 May, 2008. Web. 19 Jan. 2016.

Harding, Louette. “Irena Sendler: A Holocaust Heroine.” Daily Mail. Associated Newspapers, 1 Aug. 2015. Web. 19 Jan. 2016.

Hevesi, Dennis. “Irena Sendler, Lifeline to Young Jews, Is Dead at 98.” New York Times. New York Times, 13 May, 2008. Web. 19 Jan. 2016.

“Irena Sendler.” Jewish Virtual Library. American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, 2016. Web. 19 Jan. 2016.

Mieszkowska, Anna. Irena Sendler: Mother of the Children of the Holocaust. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2011. Print.