Irena Sendler - a Polish Activist, Righteous Among the Nations

When the Germans walled off one-third of the residents of Warsaw, Irena Sendler and her friends – using legal passes – smuggled food, medicine and money inside, under the pretext of sanitary control. After the Germans started their liquidation campaign, Sendler together with Żegota organised a mission to save children from the ghetto and hide them on the Aryan side.

Sendler was a 29-year-old social worker when the Nazis invaded Poland.  After Warsaw’s Jews were imprisoned behind the ghetto walls without food or medicine, Sendler and those she most trusted smuggled aid in.  They then began smuggling orphans out, hiding them in convents, orphanages and private homes, both in the city and in the Polish countryside.  Before the Nazis burned the ghetto to the ground, they managed to rescue over 2,500 children.

Over the next two years this groups of women organized by Sendler would care for the children.  They would disguise their identities and move them constantly lest they be discovered and killed by the Nazis.  In Poland death was the immediate dictate if one was discovered aiding a Jew.  Many joined with the underground to get assistance to feed and protect their charges.  It was hoped that after the war, the children could be re-united with their Jewish families.

Sendler was eventually captured by the Gestapo, imprisoned and tortured after refusing to divulge the identities of her co-workers.  On the way to her execution, she escaped thanks to friends who managed to bribe a guard at the last moment.  Irena and her supporters were silenced by the Communists who came to power after the Nazis.  It was verboten to speak about the activities of partisans and most were afraid to talk about their actions for many decades afterwards.

Embassy of the Republic of Poland
in Washington D.C.