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Irena Sendler

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Irena Sendler
BornFebruary 15, 1910
Warsaw, Congress Poland, Russian Empire
DiedMay 12, 2008(2008-05-12) (aged 98)
Warsaw, Poland
Occupation(s)Social worker, humanitarian.

Irena Sendler (in Polish also: Irena Sendlerowa; née Krzyżanowska; February 15, 1910 – May 12, 2008)[1] was a Polish Catholic social worker. During World War II in German-occupied Warsaw, Poland, she was a member of the Polish Underground and the Żegota resistance organization.

Sendler, assisted by some two dozen other Żegota members, saved 2,500 Jewish children by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto, providing them false documents and sheltering them in individual and group children's homes outside the Ghetto.[2]

Sendler's story was brought to light in the United States when students in Kansas found it described in a magazine and popularized it in a play, Life in a Jar.

On April 19, 2009 her story first aired on the American CBS television network in a film, The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler, written and directed by John Kent Harrison; Sendler is played by Canadian actress Anna Paquin.

Early life

Irena sympathized with Jews from childhood. Her physician father had died of typhus in 1917, contracted while treating Jewish patients. She opposed the ghetto-bench system that existed at some prewar Polish universities, and as a pro-Jewish activist was suspended for three years from Warsaw University.

World War II

During the World War II German occupation of Poland, Sendler lived in Warsaw (prior to that, she had lived in Otwock and Tarczyn) while working for urban Social Welfare departments). As early as 1939, when the Germans invaded Poland, she began aiding Jews. She and her helpers created over 3,000 false documents to help Jewish families, prior to joining the organized Żegota resistance and the children's division. Helping Jews was very risky—in German-occupied Poland, all household members risked death if they were found to be hiding Jews, a more severe punishment than in other occupied European countries.

Nazi German poster in German and Polish (Warsaw, 1942) threatening death to any Pole who aided Jews
Jewish children in the Warsaw Ghetto

In December 1942, the newly created Children's Section of the Żegota (Council for Aid to Jews), nominated her (under her cover name Jolanta[3]) to head its children's department. As an employee of the Social Welfare Department, she had a special permit to enter the Warsaw Ghetto, to check for signs of typhus, something the Nazis feared would spread beyond the ghetto.[4] During these visits, she wore a Star of David as a sign of solidarity with the Jewish people and so as not to call attention to herself.

She cooperated with the Children's Section of the Municipal Administration, linked with the RGO (Central Welfare Council), a Polish relief organization tolerated under German supervision. She organized the smuggling of Jewish children from the ghetto, carrying them out in boxes, suitcases and trolleys.[2] Under the pretext of conducting inspections of sanitary conditions during a typhoid outbreak, Sendler visited the ghetto and smuggled out babies and small children in ambulances and trams, sometimes disguising them as packages.[5] She also used the old courthouse at the edge of the Warsaw Ghetto (still standing) as one of the main routes of smuggling children out. The children were placed with Polish families, the Warsaw orphanage of the Sisters of the Family of Mary or Roman Catholic convents such as the Little Sister Servants of the Blessed Virgin Mary Conceived Immaculate[6] at Turkowice and Chotomów. Some were smuggled to priests in parish rectories. She hid lists of their names in jars in order to keep track of their original and new identities. Żegota assured the children that, when the war was over, they would be returned to Jewish relatives.[7]

In 1943, Sendler was arrested by the Gestapo, severely tortured, and sentenced to death. Żegota saved her by bribing German guards on the way to her execution. She was left in the woods, unconscious and with broken arms and legs.[2] She was listed on public bulletin boards as among those executed. For the remainder of the war, she lived in hiding, but continued her work for the Jewish children. After the war, she dug up the jars containing the children's identities and attempted to find the children and return them to their parents. However, almost all of their parents had been killed at the Treblinka extermination camp or had gone missing otherwise.

Awards

"Every child saved with my help is the justification of my existence on this Earth, and not a title to glory"[8]

Letter to Polish Parliament

After the war, she was at first persecuted by the communist Polish state authorities, for being related to the "capitalist and bourgeois" Polish government in exile and for her association with the "reactionary" Armia Krajowa Polish anti-Nazi resistance groups. She was imprisoned, miscarried her second child, and her children were denied the right to study at Polish universities.[9]

Sendler with some of the "children" she saved, in Warsaw, 2005.

In 1965, Sendler was recognized by Yad Vashem as one of the Righteous Among the Nations, which was confirmed in 1983 by the Israeli Supreme Court. She also was awarded the Commanders Cross by the Israeli Institute. It was only that year that the Polish communist government allowed her to travel abroad, to receive the award in Israel.

In 2003, Pope John Paul II sent a personal letter to Sendler, praising her wartime efforts. On 10 October 2003, Sendler received the Order of the White Eagle, Poland's highest civilian decoration and the Jan Karski Award "For Courage and Heart," given by the American Center of Polish Culture in Washington, D.C.. On 14 March 2007 Sendler was honored by Poland's Senate. At age 97, she was unable to leave her nursing home to receive the honor, but she sent a statement through Elżbieta Ficowska, whom Sendler had saved as an infant. Polish President Lech Kaczyński stated that she "can justly be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize" (though nominations are supposed to be kept secret). On 11 April 2007 (aged 97) she received the Order of the Smile, being the oldest Knight to ever receive the award.

Sendler was the last survivor of the Children's Section of the Żegota Council for Assistance to the Jews, which she had headed from January 1943 until the end of World War II.

Nobel nominee

In 2007, considerable publicity[10] accompanied Sendler's nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.[11] While failed nominees for the award are not officially announced by the Nobel organization for 50 years, the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo reported in 2007 that Irena Sendler's nominator made public the nomination. [12] Regardless of its legitimacy, talk of this nomination focused the spotlight on Sendler and her wartime contribution. The 2007 award was presented to Al Gore, former Vice President of the United States, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Life in a Jar

Sendler's tree at Yad Vashem

In 1999, Megan Stewart and her friends were inspired, by their high school history teacher Norman Conard in southeast Kansas, to investigate a small clipping on the life of an unsung hero, Irena Sendler.[13] When the students began their research, they found one website which mentioned her. Based on their findings, the students created a play, Life in a Jar (after her hiding place for documents). After ten years, their play and the subsequent media attention had made her world famous.

Irena Sendler funeral, 2008

As of August 2008, there have been over 250 performances: first in Kansas, then throughout the United States and Canada, and later in Europe. The students (now young men and women in their mid 20s) continue to share her story with the world. They made six trips to Poland to visit her before she died on May 12, 2008. The cast visited Irena in Warsaw a week before her death. Irena's final words to them, “You have changed Poland, you have changed the United States, you have changed the world (by bringing Irena’s story to light). Poland has seen great changes in Holocaust education, in the perception of the time and have provided a grand hero for their country and the world. I love you very, very much.”

The students have collected over 4000 pages of research on Irena's life and those she worked with during the war. More than 100 colleges and universities use material gathered by the project members for class instruction. She told the students in 2002, "You cannot separate people based on their race or religion. You can only separate people by good and evil. The good will always triumph."

Life in a Jar/The Irena Sendler Project has created a teachers award in the United States and Poland for the outstanding teacher in Holocaust Education. The members of the project are now working with the Children of the Holocaust Organization in Warsaw on the establishment of a statue in her honor to be completed on her birthday in 2010.

Book, film

In 2005 Anna Mieszkowska wrote a book about Sendler, Mother of the Children of the Holocaust: The Irena Sendler Story.

On April 19, 2009, a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie based on Mieszkowska's book aired on the American CBS television network. The movie is titled The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler. Sendler is played by Canadian actress Anna Paquin. Script is by John Kent Harrison and Lawrence Spagnola, and direction is by John Kent Harrison. The film was shot in Riga, Latvia.[14] Riga's Old Town, with its cobblestone streets and courtyards, was chosen in a competition among eight cities as the most appropriate location for the filming. This was the first time that a U.S. studio shot a film in Latvia.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Irena Sendler
  2. ^ a b c Baczynska, Gabriela (2008-05-12). "Sendler, savior of Warsaw Ghetto children, dies". Washington Post. The Washington Post Company. Retrieved 2008-05-12. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  3. ^ RaoulWallenberg.net Article "Irena Sendler"
  4. ^ Richard Z. Chesnoff, "The Other Schindlers: Steven Spielberg's epic film focuses on only one of many unsung heroes", U.S. News and World Report, March 13, 1994.
  5. ^ "Polish Holocaust hero dies at age 98". 2008-05-12. Retrieved 2008-05-13.
  6. ^ L.S.I.C.
  7. ^ [1]
  8. ^ 'Female Schindler' Irene Sendler, who saved thousands of Jewish children, dies - Telegraph
  9. ^ [2]
  10. ^ Nobel Prize Is Sought for Polish Heroine from The New York Sun
  11. ^ The Objects of the Foundation, Part 10 from The Nobel Foundation
  12. ^ Nominations & Speculations from International Peace Research Institute, Oslo
  13. ^ Megan Felt. "Class Act". Guideposts magazine. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  14. ^ Miss Irena's Children (2009)

References

  • Anna Mieszkowska, Die Mutter der Holocaust-Kinder, DVA 2006, ISBN 3-421-05912-8. [3]
  • Irene Tomaszewski & Tecia Werblowski, Zegota: The Council to Aid Jews in Occupied Poland 1942-1945, Price-Patterson, ISBN 1-896881-15-7.

Media related to Irena Sendler at Wikimedia Commons

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