To carry out her work, in 1942 Sendler joined Zegota (the code-name give for the Council to Aid Jews), a Polish underground organization that functioned with the support of the Polish Government in Exile, based in London. As the leader of a group of conspirators that numbered twenty-five, nearly all of them women, Irena Sendler arranged forged identity papers reflecting that the children were Catholics. Some were smuggled from the Warsaw Ghetto by various ingenious means: in sacks, toolboxes, coffins, body bags or concealed in vehicles. Once outside the Ghetto they were given sanctuary in private homes with Polish families and in orphanages but most were sheltered in Roman Catholic convents. As Sendler later said, the nuns never turned her down when she brought children to them.

Subscribe Today

• Subscribe to Armchair General Magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!
 

The name of each child and where and to whom it was sent was carefully recorded on pieces of paper that Irena Sendler placed in fruit jars she buried in a nearby garden so that after the war they could be dug up and with the information the children might be reunited with parents that survived the war. Sadly, most of the parents died in Nazi concentration camps like Treblinka and Auschwitz.

Inevitably the Gestapo learned what she was doing and in October 1943 she was arrested, sent to the notorious Pawiak political prison that was taken over by the Gestapo after the occupation. Despite frequent torture that included broken legs and feet Sendler never gave up the names of her colleagues or of a single child. She was sentenced to death but was saved at the eleventh hour when the Zegota managed to bribe a Gestapo officer and she was able to escape after being listed as executed. Although relentlessly hunted by the Germans, Irena Sendler refused to leave Warsaw (in the film she is shown to seek sanctuary in the Polish countryside using false papers) and continued to defy the Germans.

Both Sendler and her precious jars survived the war, after which she was able to locate and reunite the children with whatever family or relatives were still left alive. Yet her incredible story went largely unnoticed. Instead of being honored for her great humanitarian achievements, she was again persecuted, this time by the new Communist government of Poland for having been a part of the Polish government in exile and for helping the Polish Home Army. Sendler was imprisoned and according to her obituary in The Economist narrowly averted a second death sentence. “Both outfits were now reviled as imperialist stooges. In 1948 repeated interrogations by the secret police in late pregnancy cost the life of her second child, born prematurely. She was not allowed to travel, and her children could not study full-time at university. ‘What sins have you got on your conscience, Mama?’ her daughter asked her.” Amazingly, Sendler always felt she had not done enough. When finally recognized in the 1980s by both the Pope and Israel, this humble woman could only say: “I feel guilty to this day that I didn’t do more.”

In 2007 Irena Sendler was finally accorded the honor she richly deserved when both the presidents of Israel and Poland nominated her for the Nobel Peace Prize. She lost out to Al Gore.

The four Kansas school girls who memorialized her in the play Life in a Jar traveled to Poland several times to meet with Sendler, the last time only a short time before her death last year. Staff writer Elaine Woo wrote in the Los Angeles Times, May 12, 2008: “The lesson Sendler taught them was that ‘one person can make a difference,’ Megan Felt, one of the authors of the play, said. ‘Irena wasn’t even 5 feet tall, but she walked into the Warsaw ghetto daily and faced certain death if she was caught. Her strength and courage showed us we can stand up for what we believe in, as well,’ said Felt, who is now 23 and helps raise funds for aging Holocaust rescuers."

Irena Sendler has redefined what the word heroic is all about. Thanks to this great humanitarian 2,500 children were granted the precious gift of life.

Help Armchair General by bookmarking to