Irena Sendler
When World War II broke out, 29-year-old Irena Sendler worked in the welfare department of the Warsaw municipality. After the German occupation, the department continued to take care of the city’s poor and dispossessed. Irena Sendler tried her best to help the Jews, but after the ghetto was isolated in November 1940, this became almost impossible. Around 400,000 people were stuck in the small area allocated to the ghetto, and their situation, very difficult from the beginning, soon became even worse.
Unsanitary conditions, food and medicine shortages, and lack of medical care caused epidemics and high death rates in the overcrowded ghetto. In the fall of 1942, after the deportation of 280,000 Jews to Treblinka, putting herself at extreme risk, Irena Sendler invented all sorts of ways to enter the ghetto and help the dying Jews. She succeeded in obtaining permission from the municipality to visit the ghetto in order to inspect sanitary conditions. She immediately established contact with Jewish social service activists and began to help them. She took Jews out of the ghetto and found shelters for them.
The Jewish Relief Council, Zhegota, was established, and Sendler became actively involved in its operations. When Zhegota began to operate, by the end of 1942 most of Warsaw’s Jews had already been exterminated. But most of the Jews who had survived the mass deportations were saved thanks to the actions of the Council’s activists. This organization took care of thousands of Jews trying to survive: it found places of refuge for them, provided them with housing and medical care.
In September 1943, four months after the total destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, Sendler, whose clandestine name was Jolanta, was assigned to head the Jewish child welfare department in Zhegot. Sendler used her connections with orphanages and institutions for abandoned children to send Jewish children to them. Many of them were sent to the Rodzina Maria orphanage in Warsaw and to religious foster homes operated by nuns in nearby Chomutów and Turkowice, near Lublin. The number of children saved by Irene Sendler and her comrades is unknown.
Sendler was arrested on October 20, 1943. She managed to hide clues: the coded addresses of the children in Zegota’s care and large sums of money intended to help Jews. In spite of this, the underground activist got a death sentence and was sent to the infamous Pawiak prison. But underground activists were able to corrupt government officials and free Irena. The nearness of death did not scare the courageous underground activist away from risky operations. After her release in February 1944, while on a wanted list, she continued her underground work. Danger led her to switch to an illegal lifestyle, which stopped Sendler from even being able to be at her own mother’s funeral.
On October 19, 1965, Yad Vashem honored Irene Sendler with the title of Righteous Among the Nations. The tree that was planted in her honor is at the head of the Alley of the Righteous.
Unsanitary conditions, food and medicine shortages, and lack of medical care caused epidemics and high death rates in the overcrowded ghetto. In the fall of 1942, after the deportation of 280,000 Jews to Treblinka, putting herself at extreme risk, Irena Sendler invented all sorts of ways to enter the ghetto and help the dying Jews. She succeeded in obtaining permission from the municipality to visit the ghetto in order to inspect sanitary conditions. She immediately established contact with Jewish social service activists and began to help them. She took Jews out of the ghetto and found shelters for them.
The Jewish Relief Council, Zhegota, was established, and Sendler became actively involved in its operations. When Zhegota began to operate, by the end of 1942 most of Warsaw’s Jews had already been exterminated. But most of the Jews who had survived the mass deportations were saved thanks to the actions of the Council’s activists. This organization took care of thousands of Jews trying to survive: it found places of refuge for them, provided them with housing and medical care.
In September 1943, four months after the total destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, Sendler, whose clandestine name was Jolanta, was assigned to head the Jewish child welfare department in Zhegot. Sendler used her connections with orphanages and institutions for abandoned children to send Jewish children to them. Many of them were sent to the Rodzina Maria orphanage in Warsaw and to religious foster homes operated by nuns in nearby Chomutów and Turkowice, near Lublin. The number of children saved by Irene Sendler and her comrades is unknown.
Sendler was arrested on October 20, 1943. She managed to hide clues: the coded addresses of the children in Zegota’s care and large sums of money intended to help Jews. In spite of this, the underground activist got a death sentence and was sent to the infamous Pawiak prison. But underground activists were able to corrupt government officials and free Irena. The nearness of death did not scare the courageous underground activist away from risky operations. After her release in February 1944, while on a wanted list, she continued her underground work. Danger led her to switch to an illegal lifestyle, which stopped Sendler from even being able to be at her own mother’s funeral.
On October 19, 1965, Yad Vashem honored Irene Sendler with the title of Righteous Among the Nations. The tree that was planted in her honor is at the head of the Alley of the Righteous.
