The name Irena Sendler might be a bit obscure to you, but she was a woman worth knowing. Irena was a Polish Catholic social worker who lived in Nazi-occupied Warsaw during World War II. During WW2, she was hired in the Warsaw Ghetto as a plumbing/sewer specialist. Roughly 400,000 Jews and Romanis- 30% of Warsaw’s population- were rounded up, herded, and crammed into 3.5 square miles.
Irena knew of the Nazi’s genocidal plans, so she smuggled infants out of the ghetto in the tool box she carried. Bigger kids hid under tarp in the back of her truck. During the period, she managed to save 2500 kids and provide shelter for them in children’s homes outside the Ghetto.
Irena kept a record of the names of all the kids she smuggled out and kept the list in a glass jar buried under a tree in her backyard. In 1943, Irena was arrested by the Gestapo, severely tortured, and sentenced to death. The Zegota resistance movement in Poland saved her by bribing German guard en route to her execution. She was abandoned in a nearby forest, unconscious with broken arms and legs. After the war was over, she tried desperately to locate the children’s parents that may have survived. Many had been gassed at the Treblinka extermination camp or had otherwise gone missing. Irena saw to it that the children who lost their parents were placed into foster family homes or adopted.
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