10 WWII Heroes: Irena Sendler 3/10

"Since it is so likely that (children) will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights  and heroic courage. Otherwise, you are making their destiny not brighter, but darker." -C.S. Lewis

Historical photos are not mine. They are used for educational purposes. I own all other photographs. You may use all of my photographs, as long as proper credit is given.

This is the third in a ten part series about the heroes of World War II. You can view the introduction and table of contents to this series here.

At the beginning of each story I will give a maturity rating from 1-5. 1 means the story is appropriate for younger ages, and 5 means it is appropriate for teens and up. This story is rated 1 and can be used with younger children. (See resources below)

Irena Sendler, 1942 (public domain)

The Warsaw Ghetto, opened in 1940, was the largest ghetto during Nazi Germany, holding over 500,000 Polish Jews. During that time, Germans were allowed 2,613 calories, gentile Poles were allowed 700 calories, and Jews were allowed only 184 calories. (Three slices of white bread is approximately 184 calories.) Along with starvation and malnutrition, another issue in the ghetto was lice. In conditions as horrific as the Warsaw Ghetto, typhus, among other diseases, was common. Typhus, spread from lice feces, is one of the worst diseases because it spreads like wildfire. These were the conditions Jews were forced to live in, and many gentiles simply chose to avoid this part of town. But not Irena.

Tall Nazi guards loomed over the heavy-guarded entrance of the Warsaw Ghetto. But a young Catholic social worker, who was not even five feet tall, was not daunted. She was on a mission. Many lives
depended on the success of this mission, and she risked execution and torture. She would quickly stroll into the Warsaw ghetto, take a Jewish baby out, hide her in a tool box, face the Nazi guards and pretend nothing was wrong, and give the baby to a loving Polish-Catholic family. She would do this, and similar actions, 2,500 times within eighteen months. (yes, two thousand five hundred times)

Her name was Irena Sendler. Her inspiration came from her father. Irena's father devoted his post-WWI life to help impecunious Jews suffering from typhus. He died of typhus when Irena was seven, but she remembered he strongly believed in always helping others, regardless of religion and nationality. As soon as the Nazis began persecuting Jews, Irena began forging documents and offering food and shelter to Jews. But for Irena, this wasn't good enough. In fact, this was nothing. When the Warsaw Ghetto opened, Irena had had enough. She had to do more.

With help from 25 other social workers, Irena did her official job in the Warsaw Ghetto, looking for sick and contagious Jews, as well as look for Jewish children to get out. What first began with rescuing orphans living on the ghetto streets turned into asking random Jewish parents to give up their children.

Imagine having to give up your children to a stranger of another religion - not knowing if you would ever see them again. Imagine the thought of your child being converted, of getting caught without you being there to comfort them. There was no guarantee these Jewish children would make it out of the ghetto, never mind survive the war.

There were two main ways out of the ghetto and into Warsaw that Irena smuggled out the children - an old courthouse and a church. Older children, who could memorize Catholic prayers, were smuggled through the church. Younger children and babies were hidden in sacks, tool boxes, or under a potato

Irena Sendler

cart and smuggled through the old courthouse. Sometimes she was able to legally get a severely ill child out with an ambulance. Other times she used the ambulance to get healthy children out. If a hidden baby cried near the Ghetto wall, Irena trained her dog to bark and drown out the baby's cries. The dog's barking would hit a chain reaction and the Nazis would let Irena pass due to the chaos. Because many of the children were under false names, Irena wrote each child's identity and other information on slips of paper and kept them in a jar, which she buried under an apple tree. After the war, she planned on retrieving the slips and reuniting the children with their parents. Sadly, nearly all of the children's parents had died in the concentration camp Treblinka. Nearly 800,000 Jews lost their lives at Treblinka.

On October 20, 1943; Irena was arrested at her home. For several days, she was tortured mercilessly before being sentenced to death. Members of the resistance who she worked with bribed guards to let her go. Irena Sendler and the 2,500 children she rescued survived the war.

After the war, Irena was nominated, and won, several awards. In 2003 she received Poland's highest honor, the Order of the White Eagle. In October 1965, she was recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Israel's official Holocaust memorial, Yad VaShem. (Righteous Among the Nations was a title given to gentiles who rescued Jews during the Holocaust). She was nominated for the Noble Peace Prize in 2007, but lost to Al Gore. Although not many people are happy about this, Irena Sendler would have insisted she had better things to worry about.
Irena claims to have done nothing doing the war. "Heroes do extraordinary things. What I did was not an extraordinary thing. It was normal." she says.
Sadly, Irena Sendler died May 12, 2008, at the age of 98. May the memory of Irena and the children she saved always be a reminder of what one person can do.

Anna Paquin in The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler

Irena smuggling out her friend Carolina.

In 2009, her story was told in the Hallmark Hall of Fame film The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler. You can view this film on YouTube here. (If you don't like it in parts, it has been uploaded multiple times as a whole.) Even better, you can buy it here. This would make a great film for middle schoolers and up. There is violence, but it's not graphic and mostly offscreen. There is no profanity, but there is one scene when Irena and her future husband kiss (somewhat passionately) in a closet (think: The Princess Diaries 2), but nothing explicit happens.

Two picture books have featured Irena's story; both I would recommend for younger children.
The first one is Irena Sendler and the Warsaw Ghetto by Susan Goldman Rubin. The second one is Irena's Jars of Secrets by Marcia Vaughan.
If I had to pick one though, Irena Sendler and the Children of the Warsaw Ghetto has better pictures. Both are appropriate for kindergarten and up, and the Holocaust is dealt with appropriately in both. To see the nearest library that has these books, click here.

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In memory of Irena Sendler, all of the social workers who helped her, and the twenty-five hundred Jewish children and their families - may their valor and sacrifice never be forgotten.

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