110 years ago – on February 15, 1910, Irena Sendler (nee Krzy?anowska) – the Polish social welfare service employee, public figure, Righteous Among the Nations - was born in Warsaw.
“Every child who escaped with my participation is an excuse for my being on Earth, and not a right to glory”.
With the outbreak of World War II, Irena, through her network of accomplices, helped Jewish families hide from the Nazis: she found housing, provided new fake documents drawn up in Polish names. Since the creation of the largest ghetto in Europe, having received a pass of the city sanitary service employee through accomplices, I. Sendler and her colleagues supplied the ghetto residents with medicine, clothes and food. It was on her initiative that the rescue of children from the ghetto was organized, including infants, first orphans, and then children from families. In December 1942, Irena Sendler (underground name Jolanta) was elected as the head of the children’s section of the newly created the Council to Aid Jews (“Żegota”). Later I. Sendler placed the rescued in orphanages (like Polish orphans), in Polish families and Roman Catholic monasteries.
Irena recorded and stored data on children in several bottles, which she buried in the courtyard of her colleague, Jadwiga Piotrowska, at 9 Lekarskaia Street. Despite the almost complete destruction of Warsaw during the anti-Nazi uprising of 1944, the file-cabinet of the Żegota children’s section was preserved. Thanks to these data, at the end of the war, it was possible to identify and find the families of some children. However, most of them lost their parents, who were deported to death camps or killed in the ghetto.
Rescue had a price for Irena Sendler personally. In October 1943, according to a denunciation, she was arrested by the Gestapo, tortured and imprisoned in the Pawiak prison. Fortunately, Żegota managed to save her by giving a bribe to the German escort. Despite the danger, I. Sendler, already under the name of Clara Dombrowski, continued to help Jewish children.
In total, I. Sendler and her colleagues rescued almost 2500 children, including about 800 – directly from the Warsaw Ghetto.
After the war, the rescuer was harassed by the Polish Ministry of Public Security due to cooperation with the Polish government in exile.
On October 19, 1965, Yad Vashem awarded I. Sendler, among the first, the honorary title “Righteous Among the Nations”. A tree planted in her honor in 1983 is at the very beginning of the Avenue of the Righteous.
Irena Sendler died in Warsaw on May 12, 2008. In 2007, at the initiative of the Prime Minister of Israel and the President of Poland, she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. In the same year she became the oldest laureate of the Order of the Smile– an international award awarded to famous people “who bring joy to children”. I. Sendler was awarded Poland’s highest insignia – the Order of the White Eagle (2003). Her portrait (as well as the profiles of the Righteous Among the Nations - Zofia Kossak and Matylda Getter) was carved on a Polish silver coin. In 2009, the premiere of the feature film “The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler” took place.
In our Museum’s library you can get acquainted with the art-documentary book of Jack Mayer “The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler”.