Irena Sendler Biography

Irena Sendler

•Although she may not be one of the most famous Holocaust survivors, she was one of the most important. She led about 2,500 children to safety from the horrible Ghetto's conditions. She was never forced to do any of the things she did, yet she still risked her life and almost lost it doing something so important to her.

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•She was born on Feb. 15, 1910 in Warsaw, Poland. She died on May 12, 2008 in Warsaw, Poland due to pneumonia

•Her father was a physician and died from a typhus outbreak when Irena was seven years old

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•Became a social worker at the age of 29.

•She joined the Polish Underground when WWII broke out. (The Polish Underground aided Polish Jews)

•By the time Irena joined the Polish

Underground, Jews were already being deported to large extermination camps in Auschwitz and Treblinka.

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•In Warsaw, 1940, Nazis started to wall of a section of the city, AKA the Warsaw Ghetto. This isolated 400,000 Jews from the rest of the society.The conditions there were horrible, with poor sanitation leading to deadly diseases, and lack of food. Due to this, 5,000 people died a month

•Irena had to pass from Warsaws Epidemic Control Department to be able to enter the Ghetto legally. Once she did, she visited there everyday and brought food, medicine and clothes.

•Irena was a young mother at this time and she knew the gut-churning feeling that indicated that her children were in trouble. In response to that, she persuaded many parents living in the Ghettos to let her take their children to safety. Not only was it difficult to find families to take in these young children, and as somewhat fatal

•The people that took most of the children had to come up with creative ways to get them out of there. Some were carried out in gunny sacks or body bags. a baby was taken out in a mechanic's toolbox. Some children were buried inside loads of goods, in potato sacks, or in coffins. Then they were ALL driven out in an ambulance. And with all of that effort, they successfully smuggled about 2,500 Jewish children and gave them temporal identities.

•Also at that time, if a family member in your household had been caught hiding a Jew, every member in your house would be sentenced to death

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•When in the ambulances, the children and the other people outside have no idea of what is going on.

The children that didn't go into homes with families went to an orphanage or a church.

•In coded form, Irena managed to record all of the children's true identities and their temporary identities. All of the children's true identities were buried in a neighbor's yard, across the street from German barracks, underneath an apple tree.

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•When the war ended, Irena tracked down all of the children that she rescued by using the names and the notes that she wrote on those pieces of paper that she buried. She did this to try to bring the families together again.

•After the war, Irena discovered that most of the parents of the children died.

•Even though the children only knew Irena by her code name, Jolanta, they saw her face in newspapers, gave her a call to say that they recognize her and to say thank you. She said that she got many phone calls like that.

•Even though Irena didn't thin of herself as a hero, many people may disagree. She saved more than 2000 children from the horrible Nazi ghettos. She risked her life for people that she didn't personally know. Irena is too hard on herself, according to historyswomen.com, she said, "I could have done more, this regret will follow me to my

death."