Holocaust Heroine Saved Lives in a Jar

By Tzippe Barrow

CBN News - Jerusalem Bureau

March 17, 2007

CBNNews.com - WARSAW, Poland - On Wednesday, the Polish parliament honored 97-year-old Irena Sendler for her heroic rescue of some 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II.

At the special session, Polish parliamentarians voted unanimously to honor both Sendler and the Polish Underground, whose members aided the beleaguered Jews of Poland during the Nazi occupation.

Sendler began helping Jews well before they were herded into the Warsaw Ghetto, where thousands died of starvation and disease. Those who survived were later transported to concentration camps, where most of them were killed.

Born in 1920 in Owock, about 15 miles southeast of Warsaw, Sendler was very much a product of her upbringing. Her father, Stanislaw Krzyzanowski, was a physician who treated many impoverished Jewish families.

In 1939, when Germany's Third Reich invaded Poland, Irena was working for Warsaw's Social Welfare Department. As a senior administrator, she used every opportunity to distribute food, clothing and medicine to needy families.

When the city's Jewish population was "relocated" to the ghetto, Irena joined Zegota (The Council for Aid to Jews), organized by the Polish Underground.

The clever and courageous young woman secured a pass from the city's epidemic control department, which allowed her legal access to the ghetto. Everyday, she transported desperately needed food and supplies to the imprisoned population, as she began formulating plans to rescue the children.

A high wall topped with barbed wire and broken glass sealed off the area, as the Germans began systematically starving its population to death, with rations so scarce that survival depended on food that was smuggled in.

Armed guards stationed on the walls stood ready to shoot anyone suspected of smuggling food to the starving population. Young children were among their many victims.

In an outward expression of solidarity, Irena affixed a yellow Star of David armband on her sleeve, which the Nazis required every Jewish man, woman and child to wear.

The heart-wrenching task of separating children from their parents and siblings was just the beginning. Convincing gentile families outside the ghetto to take them in was almost as difficult.

Using every means at her disposal, Irena transported the children in ambulances, garbage cans, coffins, potato sacks, or anything else she could use to hide them from the Gestapo. She even feigned contagious diseases to keep the enemy at bay.

With impunity, she drew up hundreds of false identity papers, and in a daring and creative move, hid documentation of the children's true identities in jars that she buried in a neighbor's back yard. Later she would dig them up and work to unite the children with family members who survived the death camps.

In October 1943, the Germans arrested and imprisoned her. They tortured her, Gestapo-style, breaking her legs and feet, but they were unable to wrest the names of her co-workers or the hiding places of her Jewish charges.

Finally, they sentenced her to death, but under a pretext of further interrogation, a German soldier orchestrated her escape. Her name even appeared on a list of executed Poles. She later learned that members of Zegota had bribed the Germans.

Using a false identity, she continued her work through the end of the war. As soon as she was able, she dug up the jars and began the task of reuniting the children with their families, most of whom had perished at the hands of the Nazis.

In 1965, Irena was among the first to be named a righteous gentile by Jerusalem's Yad VaShem, the Holocaust's Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority. She also received honorary Israeli citizenship at that time.

Too frail to attend yesterday's award ceremony, Irena sent a letter, which was read by a woman she'd rescued as a baby.

"Every child saved with my help and the help of all the wonderful secret messengers, who today are no longer living, is the justification of my existence on the Earth and not a title to glory.

"Over a half-century has passed since the hell of the Holocaust, but its specter still hangs over the world and doesn't allow us to forget the tragedy."

Translate Page