Irena Krzyżanowskav

While I was in Poland I saw a book on sale in the bookshop on the site of Auschwitz of Irena Krzyżanowska life in a jar. You may not have heard of Irena Sendler an unfamiliar name to most people, but this remarkable woman defied the Nazis and saved some 2,500 Jewish children by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto. As a health worker, she sneaked the children out between 1942 and 1943 to safe hiding places and found non-Jewish families to adopt them.

So I had to find out more. below is from my research. I found quite a lot of misinformation on the internet so if your reading this and you find a mistake please do let me know.

Irena Stanisława Sendler (née Krzyżanowska), also known as as Irena Sendlerowa was born in Poland 1910 and raised in Otwock, a town some 15 miles southeast of Warsaw.

She was greatly influenced by her father who was one of the first Polish Socialists. As a doctor, his patients were mostly poor Jews of the city. In 1917 it was recorded she stood up and protected Jewish children in a schoolyard incident as most of the children along with Irena were Catholic. Prior to the war, there was a strong Jewish community about 10% of the Polish population were Jewish. Records show Poland had some 3 million Jewish people in 1937

On leaving school Irena became a nurse and then an administrator. Then in 1937 Anti-semitic laws were passed in Poland by Germany and then in 1938, the world went mad with Kristallnacht. Then in 1940, The Warsaw Ghetto is established. Irena Sendler was so appalled by the conditions that she joined Zegota, the Council for Aid to Jews, organized by the Polish underground resistance movement, as one of its first recruits and directed the efforts to rescue Jewish children.

Irena was at that time a Senior Administrator in the Warsaw Social Welfare Department, which operated the canteens in every district of the city. Previously, the canteens provided meals, financial aid, and other services for orphans, the elderly, the poor and the destitute. Now, through Irena, the canteens also provided clothing, medicine and money for the Jews of Warsaw. She had them registered under fictitious Christian names to prevent inspections.

The Resistance movement used many methods to smuggle children out of the Ghetto. From what I have found they used five main means of escape: using an ambulance a child could be taken out hidden under a stretcher or escape through the courthouse. One other way was via the sewer pipes or other secret underground passages. She also used a trolley to carry out children hiding in a sack, or in a trunk, a suitcase or something similar. Her safest way was if the child could pretend to be sick or was actually very ill, she could legally remove the child using the ambulance. Irena did train and use a dog on occasions. She was well known to the Germans who feared the barking dog.

Irena knew the children would need to be returned to their parents if they survived so the children's names and details were recorded on a cheesecloth which were placed in jars and buried under an apple tree in her back yard which is no longer there but they have a replica apple tree telling the story.

But like all things something goes wrong and was arrested by the Gestapo on October 20, 1943. She was then placed in the notorious Piawiak prison, where she was constantly questioned and tortured. During the questioning she had her legs and feet fractured. Some 8 weeks later she was rescued.

At wars end records show that only 200,000 Jewish people were left alive in Poland.

After a long search for surviving parents the first of Irena's rescued children are taken to Israel in 1948. some years later in 1965 Israel recognises Irena as a Righteous Gentile and planted trees in her honour. In 2003 Irena receives letter from Pope John Paul II

For many years Irena Sendler white-haired, gentle and courageous was living a modest existence in her Warsaw apartment. This unsung heroine passed away on Monday May 12th, 2008.

The Nobel Prize recipient, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, has dedicated his life to ensuring that none of us forget what happened to the Jews. He wrote:

"In those times there was darkness everywhere. In heaven and on earth, all the gates of compassion seemed to have been closed. The killer killed and the Jews died and the outside world adopted an attitude either of complicity or of indifference. Only a few had the courage to care ..."