Irena Sendler

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search
Irena Sendler

Irena Sendler in 2005.
Born February 15, 1910
Warsaw, Congress Poland, Russian Empire
Died May 12, 2008 (aged 98)
Warsaw, Poland
Occupation Social worker, humanitarian.

Irena Sendler (in Polish also: Irena Sendlerowa; de domo Krzyżanowska; February 15, 1910 – May 12, 2008)[1] was a Polish Catholic social worker. During World War II she was an activist in the Polish Underground and the Żegota Polish anti-Holocaust resistance in Warsaw. She helped save 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto by providing them with false documents and sheltering them in individual and group children's homes outside the Ghetto.[2]

Contents

[edit] Early life

Irena sympathized with Jews since childhood; her father, a medical doctor, had died from typhus in 1917, treating Jewish patients. She opposed the ghetto benches, and as a pro-Jewish activist was suspended from the Warsaw University for three years.

[edit] World War II resistance

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

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 the 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 of 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 Sisters Little Servants of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Mary[6] at Turkowice and Chotomów. Some were smuggled to priests in parish rectories, where they could be further hidden. 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 must be returned to Jewish relatives.[1]

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, 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 began an attempt to find the children and return them to living parents. However, almost all the parents had died at the Treblinka extermination camp.

[edit] Postwar awards

"Every child saved with my help is the justification of my existence on this Earth, and not a title to glory"[7]
Letter to Polish Parliament

After the war, she was at first persecuted by the communist authorities, for the "crime" of being related to the Polish government in exile and association with the Armia Krajowa resistance. She was imprisoned, miscarried her second child, and her children were denied the right to study at a university. [2]

In 1965, Sendler was recognized by Yad Vashem as a 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, Irena Sendler received the Order of the White Eagle, Poland's highest civilian decoration.

She was also awarded 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. Polish President Lech Kaczyński stated that she "can justly be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize" (though nominations are supposed to be kept secret). 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.

Irena Sendler's funeral, Warsaw, Poland, May 15, 2008
Irena Sendler's funeral, Warsaw, Poland, May 15, 2008

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.

[edit] Nobel nominee

In 2007, considerable publicity[8] accompanied a nomination of Sendler for the Nobel Peace Prize.[9] Although failed nominees for the award are not publicly announced by the Nobel organization for 50 years, this publicity focused a spotlight upon Sendler and her wartime contribution. The 2007 award, however, was presented to Al Gore, former Vice President of the United States, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

[edit] Life in a Jar

In 1999, Megan Stewart and her friends were inspired, by their high school history teacher in Southeast Kansas, to investigate a small clipping on the life of an unsung hero, Irena Sendler. 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 10 years their play, media stories, and their www.irenasendler.org website has made her world famous. Today there are over 180,000 websites.

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 have made 6 trips to Poland to visit her before she passed away 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 that she worked with during the war. More than 100 colleges and universities use material gathered by the project members for class instruction. Irena has taught the students great lessons of life. 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." The students continue to teach respect and understanding of all people.

Guideposts Magazine | Personal Growth | Spiritual Development - Class Act!

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.

See the Life in a Jar website for more information.

[edit] Other references in books, movies

In 2005, Ana Mieszkowska wrote a book about Sendler called "Mother of the Children of the Holocaust: The Irena Sendler Story". In May 2008, the Hallmark Hall of Fame announced that a movie based on Mieszkowska's book was being prepared and will be aired by CBS. John Kent Harrison wrote the script and will direct.

For more information about Irena Sendler and her life see Life in a Jar website

The students of "Life in a Jar" have filmed their performance and it is now available on DVD. To obtain a copy see the Life in a Jar website.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Irena Sendler
  2. ^ a b c Baczynska, Gabriela; JonBoyle (2008-05-12). "Sendler, savior of Warsaw Ghetto children, dies", Washington Post, The Washington Post Company. Retrieved on 2008-05-12. 
  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 on 2008-05-13.
  6. ^ L.S.I.C.
  7. ^ 'Female Schindler' Irene Sendler, who saved thousands of Jewish children, dies - Telegraph
  8. ^ Nobel Prize Is Sought for Polish Heroine from The New York Sun
  9. ^ The Objects of the Foundation, Part 10 from The Nobel Foundation
  • 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", ISBN 1-896881-15-7, Price-Patterson

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irena_Sendler"
Personal tools