Even when she slept, Irena couldn't forget. In dreams, she saw herself taking a child, who was crying desperately, from the arms of her mother who asked her: 'Do you swear that my son will be saved?' Responsible for saving 2.500 children from the Warsaw ghetto, Irena never forgot those terrible moments when she was forced to separate her children from their parents.
Irena Sendler passed away on May 12th, aged 98. She never considered herself a hero. On the contrary. When someone mentioned her courage, she replied: "I still have a guilty conscience about having done so little"...
The Yad Vashem Institute recognized the value of this extraordinary woman in 1965, awarding her the title "Righteous Among the Nations," but few knew her story until less than a decade ago. In 2000, the silence that had formed around her name was broken, almost by chance, thanks to the commitment of students from a high school in Uniontown, Kansas, in the United States: Megan Stewart, Elizabeth Cambers, Jessica Shelton, aged 14 , and Sabrina Coons, 16.
At the beginning of the 1999 school year, the four young women, encouraged by their teacher, Norm Conard, entered their country's National History Contest for high school students. When choosing the topic, Conard showed them a 1994 clipping from the News and World Report, where there was a note about Irena Sendler, a Polish woman who had saved at least 2.500 Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto. But, the professor had warned, it was likely that there was a typographical error in that number, as he had never heard of that lady. It didn't take long for the young women to discover that the numbers were accurate, but that they did not do justice to Irena's courage and value.
In the first months of 2000, they decided to write a play based on his life, entitled "Life in a Jar". And, to their great surprise, they discovered that Irena was still alive and in good health, despite being confined to a wheelchair for years, due to injuries caused by the torture she suffered at the hands of the Gestapo. The young women got in touch with Irena and, from then on, changed her life.
The play had great acceptance and was performed hundreds of times across the United States and Canada, until finally reaching the stage in Poland, in addition to being broadcast on radio and television.
The early years
Irena was born on February 15, 1910, in Otwock, a city near Warsaw, the only child of the Krzyzanowski couple. The family has always maintained close relations with the city's Jewish community. Her father, Stanislaw, was a doctor and among his patients were several Jews, many of whom were without resources. An ardent socialist, Stanislaw never tired of teaching little Irena that the act of helping should be a need for every human being that emanated from the heart, regardless of whether the individual being helped was rich or poor, nor what religion or nationality they belonged to. In 1917, Otwock was struck by a typhus epidemic. Stanislaw, true to his ideals, did not leave the city and continued to help the sick. He himself contracted typhus, but before he died he made one last recommendation to his daughter: "If you see someone drowning, you should jump into the water and try to help, even if you don't know how to swim."
In her youth, Irena studied Polish literature and joined the Socialist Party. In the 1930s, as endemic Polish anti-Semitism increased in virulence, Irena was expelled from the University of Warsaw for confronting a professor who had forced Jewish students to sit separately in class. The young woman went to the "Jewish section" of the room and when the teacher told her to change seats, she replied: "Today I am Jewish."
He married Mieczyslaw Sendler, with whom he had no children and started working as a social worker. When the Germans invaded Poland in September 1939, she worked at the Warsaw Social Welfare Department, the only official Polish organization authorized to operate in the country, besides the Red Cross. Irena was responsible for managing the community cafeterias located in each district of the city, which, thanks to her, distributed, in addition to food, clothing, medicine and some money. And, when it became forbidden to assist Jews, she registered those who came to ask for help under fictitious Christian names. To avoid inspection visits, she included in the files that there was an infectious disease in the family, such as typhus or tuberculosis.
Working inside the Warsaw Ghetto
In Poland, the Nazi persecution of Jews began immediately after the invasion. The Germans knew that the deep anti-Semitism that permeated Polish society would make it easier to carry out their plans for the Jewish community. In October 1940, the Gestapo decreed the immediate transfer of all Jews in Warsaw to an old neighborhood that, within a few months, became a ghetto in the most disastrous sense of the word. Quickly, a high wall was erected, isolating its inhabitants from "Aryan Warsaw". The ghetto, measuring just 4 km2, with capacity under normal conditions for 60 people, now houses 380 Jews. In the following months, another 100 were taken there. In less than a year, half a million Jews were isolated and closely watched by the Nazis, to prevent contact with the 'Aryan' part of the city.
Inside the ghetto, living conditions were subhuman. Food quotas were minimal, sanitary and pharmaceutical products were in insufficient quantity. A large part of the population did not even have shelter; Whoever got a room shared it with 10 other people. In addition to summary executions, the Nazis wanted to kill Jews from hunger, cold and disease. Between the beginning of 1940 and mid-1942, some 83 died.
The numbers were not greater because the Jews were able to smuggle food and medicine inside the walls. Jewish institutions worked inside the ghetto trying to alleviate the suffering of their brothers. These include the Jewish Mutual Aid Society, the Jewish Federation of Orphanages and Children's Homes Associations, and the Organization for Rehabilitation through Work (ORT). Until the end of 1941, when the United States entered the war and Americans were prohibited from remitting funds to countries under enemy occupation, organizations received resources mainly from American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.
When, in November 1940, the ghetto gates closed, Irena realized that 90% of the 3 Jews to whom she helped were beyond her reach. But he didn't give up. In a statement to Yad Vashem, he says: "I obtained, for myself and my friend Irena Schultz, identifications from the Sanitary Office, whose task, among others, was to fight against contagious diseases. I claimed that we were not going to help Jews, but only to carry out a survey diary of sanitary conditions. Later, I obtained passes for other employees". Irena Schultz was also honored in 1965 by Yad Vashem with the title of "Righteous Among the Nations".
With this stratagem, the two Irenas could enter the ghetto whenever they wanted. Once inside, the young women immediately reconnected with their old contacts. Every day - and more than once in a single day - they crossed the gates carrying, hidden in their clothes, food, clothing, medicine and money that they obtained from the Social Welfare Department itself, presenting documents that they themselves forged. In order not to arouse the suspicion of the German guards, they always entered through different gates and, once inside the ghetto, Irena wore the Star of David on her arm. In addition to being a way of showing her solidarity, she was confused among the population and "no one asked me for documents or questioned what I did."
As the months passed, living conditions in the ghetto became even more dire. It is known that from June 1941 the monthly number of deaths reached 5 thousand. Irena was definitely convinced that the only way to save someone from that hell was to help them escape. She then starts working on organizing the escapes. The first to be removed were the orphaned children.
In July 1942, the Nazis began mass deportation to the Treblinka camp. It had become even more pressing to remove as many people as possible from the ghetto. Irena was already in possession of a list of addresses where Jews could stay, especially children, until they could obtain "Aryan" identity documents and find a place to live in relative safety. Sendler and Schultz obtained 3 false documents.
As the deportations continued unabated, Irena decided to seek help and joined Zegota, an underground movement with the necessary infrastructure and money. This organization, which had the financial support of British Jews, was created in that fateful month of July by Catholic Poles, many among them members of the resistance, who opposed the mass extermination of Jews. The objective was to help Jews survive among the local population. Unfortunately, when it began operating at the end of 1942, it was already too late for most of Warsaw's Jews. More than 280 had already been killed in Treblinka. However, there were still thousands inside the ghetto and many more living in hiding in Warsaw and other cities.
Using the codename Jolanta, Irena became one of Zegota's main activists. She commanded a team of 25 people tasked with taking children out of the ghetto, obtaining false documents and finding a family or place to shelter them - something not so easy to achieve.
Rescuing a Jewish child required the help of at least ten people. The first step was to make contact with families inside the ghetto. Persuading parents to separate from their children was a painful task. "I always heard the same question: 'Do you swear my son will live?' But what could I promise? I didn't even know if I could get them out alive...", Irena recalled. "The only certainty was that if they remained there, the probability of survival was practically nil. I knew that the first to be killed by the Nazis were children. Sometimes, the father accepted the idea, but the poor mother was reluctant; it was like tearing their flesh. On other occasions, it was the opposite. I understood their pain, but indecision was fatal, in many cases. When I went back to try to change their minds, I could no longer find them... They had been taken to the fields of death."
During the last three months before the liquidation of the ghetto, fighting against time, Sendler and Schultz removed 2.500 children. The two young women sometimes took them through underground corridors of the Court building, located between the ghetto and the Aryan side; other times, through a church that had access from both sides; or even through the sewers. Some were hidden inside ambulances. Young children were sedated to keep from making noise. In Irena's hands, anything became an instrument of escape: bags, trash cans, potato sacks, coffins. She even hid some inside her coat! Once outside the walls, the children were taken to places where they would stay until they were handed over to trustworthy families or religious institutions.
However, escaping the ghetto was easier than surviving on the "Aryan" side. Irena had managed to recruit at least one person at each of the Department of Social Welfare's centers, who helped her forge hundreds of documents. To hide them, she had the help of several religious institutions. Among these, the Convent of the Family of Mary, run by Mother Superior Matylda Getter, and that of Turkowice, run by Mother Superior Stanislawa. In the latter, Irena also had the help of Sisters Irena and Hermana, who whenever they received a coded message, they ran to Warsaw to get the children. The four nuns were also honored by Yad Vashem, in 1965, with the title of "Righteous Among the Nations".
In her reports after the war, Irena gave the names of several people who helped her, including Jan Dobraczynski. A member of a far-right Christian party with an anti-Semitic platform, Jan was director of the Warsaw Social Welfare Department. Thanks to his role, he obtained documents for the children, in which he certified that they were Christians, orphans or needy, so that Christian institutions could admit them. He thus saved more than 300. Jan Dobraczynski was also recognized by Yad Vashem with the title of "Righteous Among the Nations".
However, of all her collaborators within Zegota, Irena had the most affinity with Julian Grobelny, codenamed Trojan. A man with a big heart, completely devoted to saving those in danger. Irena said that, once, he called her together to look for a Jewish girl who had been in a state of shock for several days. She had watched her mother be killed in a bestial way. "We were almost arrested during the trip", recalled Irena, "and as he was a vital person for the resistance, I suggested proceeding alone, but Grobelny indignantly refused. Upon finding the girl, he picked her up and, speaking slowly, affectionately, managed to make her come out of her torpor, until she managed to stammer: 'I don't want to stay here, take me away'. Trojan then asked me to find a home where that innocent girl would find affection."
Irena and everyone else knew that if they were arrested, they would be shot. Posters throughout Warsaw warned that the penalty for hiding Jews was death and there was no shortage of people willing to profit from the tragedy, blackmailing the Jews and then gaining even more by handing them over to the Germans in exchange for some reward.
Irena Sendler worried about the future of her children. See how she herself describes the care she took to, one day, be able to recover her identity: "I wrote the names of the saved children on tissue paper. There were two identical lists, which I kept in two different bottles. For safety reasons, I didn't leave them the lists at home, I buried them in different places. As the number of children saved increased, the bottles where I kept the lists were unearthed and new names included."
She hoped, at the end of the war, to locate the children and inform them of their true origins. She wanted them to one day be able to recover their names, their identities, their families and, most importantly, return to their faith. Irena made the families involved in rescuing the minors promise that they would return them to any relative who survived the war. Unfortunately, not everyone kept her word. After the war ended, Irena spent years with the lists in her hands, trying to locate missing children and reunite them with their true family.
Sendler and Schultz also helped adults escape the ghetto. The escape was organized when they left the ghetto to go to work. Guards were bribed to omit them from their daily count of employees. The Jews were hidden on the Aryan side and Zegota was responsible for helping them. Part of the expenses of families that sheltered Jews were paid by this organization, which also provided them with clothing, food and milk coupons. Generally, Irena put young Jewish women to work as governesses or nannies. They adopted a new name and, as Poland was a deeply Catholic country, they had to learn at least the basics of their supposed faith.
Pawiak's arrest
On October 20, 1943, Irena went to her mother's house for a meeting of friends. At the end of the afternoon, the Gestapo invaded the place. Luckily, helped by a friend, she had managed to hide documents that incriminated her and a large amount of money from Zegota intended to help the Jews. The search lasted three hours. They found nothing, but Irena was arrested and taken to the terrible Pawiak prison. One of her collaborators had been arrested and, under torture, revealed her name.
The German who questioned her was young, well-mannered and spoke fluent Polish. She wanted the names of Zegota's leadership, addresses and the list of everyone involved. Despite being brutally tortured - both her legs were broken - she did not give in. Her will was stronger than the pain. She refused to betray collaborators or children. She spent three months in that prison before being tried and sentenced to death. "Every day, at dawn, the cell doors were opened and the names of people who never returned were called. One day, my name was called"; recalled Irena in her statements.
Irena was being taken to the place where she was to be shot when a Gestapo agent appeared with the order to take her for another interrogation. Zegota had managed to bribe the agent minutes before the execution; After taking her to a corner, the Nazi ordered her to disappear. She was free. That same night, Irena saw posters on the walls of Warsaw with the names of the people executed. Among them was hers.
It didn't take long for the Gestapo to discover what had happened; This forced Irena to live in hiding, under a false identity, until the liberation of Poland by the Russian armies-exactly like so many others she had saved. But, even persecuted by the Gestapo, she continued to act.
The end of the war
In 1945, at the end of the war, his first step was to unearth the bottles where he had kept the lists with the names of the children he had helped to save. He then started looking for them to reunite them with parents or other members of their families. Few, however, were alive. Adolph Berman, a Zegota leader, decided to take 400 children to Israel. Despite all efforts, to this day there is no information about the whereabouts of 500. Perhaps many did not survive or are living in Poland or other countries, unaware of their Jewish identity.
At the end of the war, the communists took over Poland. The new regime's policy of strong official anti-Semitism meant that the story of Zegota, Irena Sendler and so many others was erased from the country's history books. Irena herself was branded a fascist for her work with Zegota during the war and for saving Jews.
He returned to work as a social worker. She led a simple and discreet life and did not talk about her past. Her marriage to Mieczyslaw Sendler ended shortly after the war. Divorced, she married Stefan Zgrzembski, with whom she had two children, Janka and Adam. When, in 1965, the Yad Vashem Institute awarded Irena the title of "Righteous Among the Nations", communist leaders did not allow her to leave the Poland to receive the award. Only later, in 1983, was she able to receive the title, when a tree was planted in her name.
The year 1994 is marked by the fall of communism in Poland. But Irena's life would only change six years later, when 4 young American women from Uniontown, Kansas, contacted her. Irena lived, at the time, in a nursing home in Warsaw, confined to a wheelchair, her souvenir from the Gestapo. In recent years, Elzbieta Ficowska, a girl she had saved when she was 5 months old, helped care for her.
Irena recalls the moment she found out about the young people's project: "I was stunned and fascinated at the same time; interested, very happy." In one of Irena's first letters to the young women, she wrote: "My emotion is being overshadowed by the fact that no one in my circle of collaborators, who lived at risk of their lives, was able to live long enough to enjoy all the honors that today fall to me. ... I can't find words to thank you, my dear girls... Before you wrote the play "Life in a Jar", no one in my own country or in the whole world had worried about me or the work I I played during the war...".
In May 2001, the 4 young women, accompanied by Professor Conrad, traveled to Warsaw to meet Irena. At the same time, the international media began to publicize his story. Moved, Irena tells the young women that they were "the rescuers of Irena's story before the world".
When publishing the story, several newspapers ran an old photo of her. Suddenly, several people contacted her: "I remember her face... I'm one of those children, I owe her my life and my future, I need to see her!"
In 2003, Irena Sendler received a letter from Pope John Paul II. In March of that year it was Poland's turn to make official reparations. Irena is awarded the Order of the White Eagle, the most important distinction granted by the government of that country. Due to her delicate state of health, she did not participate in the ceremony in her honor, but sent Elzbieta Ficowska to read a letter on her behalf. Among others, the letter said: "We and future generations need to remember the cruelty and human hatred that dominated those who 'turned over' their neighbors to the enemy; the hatred that ordered them to commit murder and the indifference to the tragedy of those who perished. My The dream is that this memory becomes a warning to the world - so that humanity never experiences a tragedy of similar proportions again."
The following year a book about his life written by Anna Mieszkowska was published: Mother of the Children of the Holocaust: The Irena Sendler Story.
In March 2007, Poland paid tribute to him, in a solemn session in the Upper Chamber of Parliament, and his name was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. In 2008, in February, when he celebrated his 98th birthday, he received from the young women of Kansas the news that the play about his life had been performed by the 254th. time, in Toronto, Canada. Irena departed this world on May 12, 2008, in Warsaw. Hundreds of people accompanied her body to her final resting place, in the Warsaw cemetery. On the occasion, the Orthodox Chief Rabbi of Poland, Rabbi Michael Schudrich, recited Kaddish for that noble human being.
The Rabbi remembered her saying that he hoped Irena's life would serve as an inspiration to others: "We were blessed with so many years when we had her as a living example... She not only saved Jewish children; she also saved the soul of Europe... Your example can help us change the world... All it takes is for every person who hears your story to try to do an act of kindness for another human being, day after day."
Bibliography:
Paldiel, Mordecai, The Righteous Among The Nations, Rescuers of Jews During The Holocaust, Yad Vashem - The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority.
Life in a jar, The Irena Sendler project, www.irenasendler.org
International Herald tribune article, Poland holds memorial service for Irena Sendler, 15 May 2008
