Irena Sendler: The woman who smuggled children to safety
For decades, Irena Sendler's wartime heroics went unrecognised. Here's how this Polish social worker smuggled 2,500 Jewish children to safety.
Image: Irena Sendler in December 1944 | Public Domain
The Holocaust is seen as history’s deadliest genocide. During World War II, as Germany conquered large swathes of Europe, millions of Jews in these lands found themselves persecuted by the Nazis. This disturbing trend turned increasingly deadly, with many Jews sent to extermination camps and killed.
Thousands, however, were mercifully rescued from Nazi clutches without ever setting foot in these camps. Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-winning 1993 film Schindler’s List has familiarised modern audiences with the inspirational story of Oskar Schindler, who saved 1,200 Jewish lives.
Little known until the early 21st century were the similarly heroic deeds of Polish humanitarian Irena Sendler. Now hailed as the ‘female Schindler’, she is said to have smuggled as many as 2,500 Jewish children to safety. Sky HISTORY’s World War II with Tom Hanks reveals how seeds of the Holocaust were sown in Poland, setting the scene for Sendler’s brave intervention.
Irena Sendler’s early life
Irena Sendler was born on 15th February 1910 in Warsaw, at that time part of the Russian Empire. Over the next decade, the city would be switched to German hands before Poland finally regained its independence. Irena grew up among Jews, with her physician father Henryk even treating many of them free of charge.
Henryk died of typhus in 1917, but had taught his daughter an important mantra, one communicated in metaphorical terms:
'Whenever you see someone drowning, always come to their rescue, even if you can’t swim.'
It’s a message Irena would take with her to the University of Warsaw, where she studied literature.
Irena objected to the university’s policy of segregating Jewish students from their non-Jewish cohorts. In protest, she defaced her grade card, prompting university authorities to temporarily suspend her from her studies. She was a social worker in Warsaw when Nazi Germany invaded Poland in September 1939.
The notorious Warsaw Ghetto
In November 1940, Nazi authorities established the Warsaw Ghetto. They would cram about 400,000 Jews into this walled-off area of just 1.3 square miles, roughly the size of New York’s Central Park. Living conditions for Jews in the ghetto were poor, with food, water and medicine all in perilously short supply.
With only enough space for about half a dozen Jews per room, Warsaw Ghetto proved the ideal breeding ground for infectious disease. As an employee of the Warsaw municipality’s Social Welfare Department, Irena Sendler obtained a permit to enter the ghetto. Appalled by the rampant starvation and disease there, she grew determined to get as many children out of the ghetto as possible.
How did Irena Sendler help children to escape?
The Nazis did technically conquer Poland, but this didn’t stop a stubborn Polish resistance movement ensuing. As a member of this resistance, Irena developed a network that would enable her to smuggle Jewish children to safe ground. She was the first part of the chain, regularly visiting the ghetto under the pretence of doing little more than monitoring the sanitary conditions.
In reality, Irena was also striving to alleviate the Jews’ struggles by slipping essentials like food and clothing into their hands. Soon, she would be sneaking children the other way through various creative means, like hiding them in bags and coffins. Older children too large to fit in these containers would instead be taken through secret underground passageways.
Crucially, a church bordered one of the ghetto walls, allowing some children to enter it through a back door and come out the other side. As they left, these children would be disguised as Christians, another way for them to elude detection. Fake identity documents would also be created for the evacuees as they were transferred to safe harbours like orphanages and convents.
Was Irena Sendler caught by the Nazis?
After another member of the Polish resistance was caught by the Nazis and implicated Irena Sendler, the latter was seized and interrogated. Despite being tortured by her captors, she refused to divulge her collaborators’ names or the whereabouts of the children she had smuggled out. The Nazis duly sentenced her to death, but guards were bribed into releasing her.
Irena Sendler stayed in hiding for the rest of World War II, and her lifesaving efforts remained largely unknown to the wider world for decades. In the Noughties, however, the acclaimed play, Life in a Jar, a story of Irena’s wartime heroics, toured across the world. Irena Sendler subsequently picked up multiple honours, including a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize, before her death in 2008.
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