She aroused no suspicion as she left the Warsaw ghetto with a parcel under her arm.
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| Irena Sendler: forgotten heroine |
As her dog barked noisily, she gripped her parcel more tightly and gave a friendly wave to the Gestapo guards.
What they did not know - and they would have killed her if they had - was that she was smuggling Jewish babies to safety.
Irena Sendler was a Polish Catholic social worker who lived in occupied Poland. She was permitted by the Nazi authorities to enter the Jewish ghetto in order to check for signs of typhus, for the Nazis were terrified of the disease spreading across the city.
Gestapo officials had no idea that they were being duped and that Irena Sendler was involved in one of the greatest rescue missions of all time.
In the guise of an employee of the Social Welfare Department, she smuggled some 2,500 Jewish children to safety.
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| Ghetto children: smuggled out in suitcases |
Her work was one of extreme danger. Warsaw, in 1942, was full of Gestapo officers who were constantly searching for Jews who’d escaped from the ghetto.
‘Transporting weapons… planning sabotage against the Germans, none of it was as dangerous as hiding a Jew,’ said Wladyslaw Bartoszewski of the Polish Resistance. ‘You have a ticking time bomb in your home. If they find out, they will kill you, your family and the person you are hiding.’
Under the pretext of inspecting conditions in the ghetto, Sendler smuggled out babies and small children in packages, suitcases, boxes and trolleys. Older children were taken out through the city’s sewers.
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| Warsaw Jews: loaded on trains for deportation |
Irena always went into the ghetto with a dog, which she had trained to bark whenever German soldiers were about. This enabled her to cover any noises that the babies might make while they were wrapped up in her parcels.
Once the children were safely out of the ghetto, they were given Catholic birth certificates and forged identity papers. These were signed by priests and senior officials in the Social Services Department.
The children were then taken to orphanages and convents in the countryside around Warsaw.
By mid-1942, the SS were rounding up huge numbers of Jews and transporting them to Treblinka extermination camp.
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| Smuggled out in parcels |
Sendler begged Jewish parents to release their children, knowing it was their only hope of survival. In an interview before her death in 2008, she spoke vividly about her conversations with the parents of these children.
‘Those scenes over whether to give a child away were heart-rending... Their first question was: 'What guarantee is there that the child will live?' I said, 'None. I don't even know if I will get out of the ghetto alive today.’
Sendler kept a list of all she had rescued and she secretly buried their names in jars. It was hoped that they would be reunited with their parents when the war was over.
In 1943, Sendler was arrested by the Gestapo. They’d grown suspicious of her activities and realised she was working on behalf of Warsaw’s Jews. She was beaten, severely tortured by her guards (they broke her legs and arms) and then sentenced to death for refusing to give them any information.
News of her impending execution reached Żegota, the secret Council to Aid Jews, who managed to save her by bribing a German guard as she was led away to be killed.
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| Irena: only recognised in old age |
She was listed on the bulletin boards as among those who’d been executed, something that enabled her to live in hiding for the rest of the war.
At the war’s end, Irena dug up jars containing the 2,500 children's identities in the hope of reuniting the children with their parents. But almost all of them had been executed in Treblinka.
Irena was persecuted by Poland’s post-war Communist authorities because of her relations with the Polish government-in-exile. Not until 1965 did she receive recognition for her extraordinary bravery: she was honoured as a “righteous gentile” by the Israeli Holocaust Memorial Centre, Yad Vashem.
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| Oskar Schindler: more famous |
With the fall of Communism came recognition within her own land: many of Poland’s highest honours were bestowed on her.
In 2007, international recognition came when Irena was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. But she did not win: the prize was instead awarded to former Vice President, Al Gore, for his work on climate change.
Irena remained modest to her dying day. When asked about her work, she said simply: ‘Every child saved with my help is the justification of my existence on this Earth, and not a title to glory.’
Irena Sendler is the subject of a current PBS documentary: Irena Sendler: In the Name of Their Mothers
My latest book, Wolfram: The Boy Who Went to War, is out now. Click here for more information.
