Irene Sendler

Among the most courageous, but largely unrecognized figures of World War II, stands a Catholic social worker who worked tirelessly to save lives from the horrors of German occupation.

The doctor's daughter

Irene Sendler, also known as Irena Sendlerowa, was born in Poland in 1910. The daughter of a doctor, Sendler grew up watching her father care for his patients and neighbors, many of whom were Jews. After he died of typhus in 1917, Jewish community leaders offered to send the young Sendler to Warsaw University, where she got involved in protest movements that resulted in a 3-year suspension. She worked for urban social welfare departments in Otwock and Tarczyn, but by 1939 when the Germans invaded Poland, she was living in Warsaw and was one of the first to volunteer when Jewish families needed help evading concentration camps.

Underground

Despite the deadly consequences of discovery, hiding Jews was punishable by death in German-occupied Poland, Sendler joined dozens of others working in the Polish Underground. Together they created over 3,000 false documents that allowed Jewish families to travel outside of occupied territory. Later she joined with the Zegota resistance organization and was nominated to head the children’s section in 1943. As an employee of the Social Welfare Department, Sendler had special access to the Ghetto. Wearing a Star of David on her clothing, she made frequent inspections of the area to check that conditions were sanitary during several typhus outbreaks. During these “inspections”, Sendler and her helpers used ambulances and trams to smuggle thousands of babies and small children out of Warsaw. She worked with orphanages, parishes and private citizens to provide care for the children, giving them new identities in an effort to keep them safe.

Life after death

Later that same year, Sendler’s activities were discovered by the Gestapo and she was arrested, tortured and sentenced to death. Bribes from the Zegota organization rescued her from execution, but she was listed among the dead on public bulletin boards. Living in hiding, she continued her efforts to help Jewish children and lived to see their true identities restored after the war ended.

At the time of her death in 2008, Sendler was the last survivor of the Children's Section of the Żegota Council to Assist Jews. Posthumously she received the Audrey Hepburn Humanitarian Award for her devotion to the children of Poland.