Early Life

Irena Sendlerowa (Sendler) was born to Stanislaw and Janina Krzyzanowski on February 15th, 1910 in Otwock, Poland. When Irena Sendler was just seven years old her father died. He died from typhus and the doctors did not want to cure him because they did not want to get infected, so he died on February 1917. Jewish community leaders helped her mother pay for Irena’s education and she attended Warsaw University to study Polish literature. Irena was a very bold woman and she opposed a ghetto bench system which started a public protest. That resulted in Irena getting suspended for three years from the university. She was married to Mieczysław Sendler for a few years and then they got a divorce. After that, Irena married Stefan Zgrzembski where she had three children, Andrzej, Adam, and Janina Zgrzembski. They eventually got a divorce and Irena married Mieczysław again. Things did not work out and they got a divorce again. Originally, Irena was a social worker that worked in the Warsaw Social Welfare Department where she provided food and financial aid for the poor, orphans, and the elderly. However, once Germany invaded Poland in 1939 she started taking care of the Jews.

What she did to help

When Hitler invaded Poland, Irena decided to help take care of the Jews. Once Hitler built the Ghettos, Irena could not help the Jews anymore because it was very large and hundreds of thousands of Jews were in there. 5,000 Jews died per month because of starvation and disease, so Irena Sendler and a few others decided to risk their own lives to save others. Irena and helpers prepared about 3,000 false documents to help the Jewish families.

Irena had a daring idea that had caused her to risk her life. She wore a Star of David armband to show that she supported the Jews. She decided to rescue the Jewish children from the Ghettos with the help of other workers. She joined Zegota which was a Polish Underground group that helped the Jews. Irena, along with others, helped smuggle out children from the Ghettos. She would do it in different ways. She would say that the child was sick and get an ambulance to get them out of the Ghettos. To avoid inspection she would say that the child has a contagious disease. In other cases, she would carry them in coffins, body bags, potato sacks and more. Some others ways were hiding the child under the stretcher when an ambulance came, escaping through a courthouse, and sewer pipes or secret underground passages. In some cases she would make the children escape through the church which were guarded by the Germans. If the child knew how to speak good Polish and could memorize prayers, they were allowed to go through the church. Irena would give the child a temporary false identities like false Christian names. Then she would send them off to other Christian families, orphanages, or convents. She recorded the new addresses and names and put it in a jar near an apple tree in a backyard so in the future she would be able to dig it up and reunite the children with their families.

Later on the Nazis became aware of her activities and she was arrested on October 20th, 1943 by the Gestapo and taken to the Pawiak Prison. She was whipped, they broke her arms and feet, and beat her severely. The Gestapo tried to force her to reveal and where the children were and who helped her. Even though she was treated unfairly, she refused to reveal the location of the children or the people that helped her and she was sentenced to death. At the very last minute the other members of the Zegota bribed the Gestapo to release her. The Gestapo finally released her, but Irena did not stop her activities, but she had to go into hiding. In total she saved 2,500 Jewish children from the Ghettos. She has won awards for her heroic acts.

How she is remembered

In 1999, a group of four girls in Uniontown High School in Kansas started researching and discovered who Irena Sendler was. They did and wrote play called Life in a Jar which got them an award in 2000 for the National History Day competition. Sabrina Coons, Megan Stewart, Elizabeth Cambers, Janice Underwood along with their teacher Norman Conard got an international recognition. Ever since they made play, Irena’s story been publicly noticed. People are doing the Life in a Jar which is a program and presentation which started from the play. The program, along with the presentation is information about the Holocaust and heroes. It is a message of hope not despair. There is also a book called Life in a Jar: The Irena Sendler Project from Jack Mayer that is written about her. What the book and the Life in a Jar Project have in common is that they both recognize her heroic act along with other heroes during the Holocaust. Sadly, she died on May 12th, 2008 from pneumonia at the Warsaw hospital at the age of 98. A famous quote from her is “...if you see a man drowning, you must try to save him even if you cannot swim” and “I was brought up to believe that a person must be rescued when drowning, regardless of religion and nationality” (Irena Sendler).

Other facts about Irena Sendler

• Her son, Adam, died in 1999 on the same day as the Life in a Jar project started. Her other son, Andrzej, died in infancy. Her daughter Janina is still alive.
• Her inspiration to help people was her father because he was a doctor (physician) and she would see him care for the Jews
• Her father died from the disease because he was taking care of the poor Jews
• Her code name was “Jolanta"
• She has won awards like Order of the Smile in 2007, Commander's Cross with Star of the Order of Polonia Restituta in 2001, Commander's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta in 1996, and the John Karski award for Valor and Courage in 2003; she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007
• When the Gestapo went to Irena's house to take her to the prision, there was another woman that had to hide the jar of names and adresses of the children in her underwear
• After the war ended, Irena dug up the names but she could not find the families of the children because most were killed in the concentration camps but only some of the families reunited
• In an interview, Irena Sendler says that she does not like being called a hero