Irena Sendler - “A person must be rescued when drowning, regardless of religion and nationality"

Since it is Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) today, I decided that I would write my second blog post about a remarkable woman who saved the lives of Jewish children in the Warsaw Ghetto. The courage shown by Irena Sendler perfectly illustrates this year’s theme for HMD: ‘Be the light in the darkness’.

A question I often ask myself when teaching the events of the Holocaust is whether I would have been brave enough to oppose the Nazis, had I been alive at the time. It is an uncomfortable thought to ponder. Many of us like to picture ourselves taking part in an armed uprising or joining the resistance, but such actions were clearly not a typical response to the Nazi regime. Considering the opposite end of the spectrum, we might swear we would never have been collaborators, but the very nature of the Nazi police state made it difficult not to be complicit in Nazi activities at some level.

Of course we can never know how we would have responded to events that occurred in the past. What we can do is ask whether we are complicit in the darkness that exists today. As the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust point out, “increasing levels of denial, division and misinformation in today’s world mean we must remain vigilant against hatred and identity-based hostility”. I hope that by sharing Irena Sendler’s story you will be inspired to challenge prejudice, discrimination and intolerance wherever you encounter it.

Childhood

Irena Sendler was born on 15 February 1910 in Warsaw and grew up in Otwock, a town about 15 miles south-east of the city. Although her father died shortly before her seventh birthday, she was profoundly influenced by his political and humanitarian principles. Stanisław Henryk Krzyżanowski was among the earliest members of the Polish Socialist Party (PSP) and in his work as a doctor he treated the very poor, including Jews, free of charge. It was during an outbreak of typhus in 1917 among his Jewish patients that he contracted the disease and subsequently died from its complications. After his death, the Jewish community offered financial help for Irena and her mother, but Janina Krzyżanowska declined their assistance.

Before World War Two

From 1927, Irena studied law for two years and then Polish literature at the University of Warsaw, interrupting her studies from 1932 to 1937. By the outbreak of World War Two she had submitted her master degree thesis, but had not taken the final exams. During her time at university, Irena reported having suffered from academic disciplinary measures because of her activities and reputation as a communist and Jewish sympathiser. She opposed the ghetto benches system introduced at the University of Warsaw in 1937, which segregated Jewish students in the lecture halls, and defaced the "non-Jewish" identification on her grade card. Irena was also associated with social and educational units of the Free Polish University (Wolna Wszechnica Polska), where she was influenced by activists from the illegal Communist Party of Poland. At Wszechnica Irena also belonged to a group of social workers led by Professor Helena Radlińska that would later be involved in rescuing Jews.

As a social worker, Irena was employed in the Section for Mother and Child Assistance at the Citizen Committee for Helping the Unemployed. She worked mostly in the field, visiting Warsaw's poor neighbourhoods to assist socially disadvantaged women. She published two pieces in 1934, both concerned with the situation of children born out of wedlock and their mothers. In 1935, the government abolished the section and Irena became a senior administrator in the Department of Social Welfare and Public Health.

During World War Two

Soon after the German invasion of Poland, on 1 November 1939, the German occupation authorities barred the Social Welfare Department from providing any assistance to Jewish citizens. But Irena continued to help her Jewish charges, who were now officially served only by the Jewish community institutions. This became much harder, however, when the Nazis decreed the establishment of a ghetto in Warsaw and sealed it off in November 1940. Surrounded by a three-metre-high wall of barbed wire, 400,000 Jews were placed within a 1.3 square mile area of the city. Irena then used her job to gain special permits from the Epidemic Control Department, which allowed her to enter the ghetto. Under the pretext of conducting sanitary inspections to check for signs of typhus, she sneaked in clothing, food, medication and other necessities. Later, Irena and other social workers helped smuggle out babies and small children in toolboxes, potato sacks and coffins. This became an urgent priority in the summer of 1942, when the Germans began the liquidation of the ghetto. This work was done at huge risk, since giving any kind of assistance to Jews in German-occupied Poland was punishable by death.

When the Council for Aid to Jews (Zegota) was established in Autumn 1942, Irena became one of its main activists. Although most of the Jews of Warsaw had been killed by this time, Zegota played a crucial role in the rescue of those who survived the massive deportations. The underground organization took care of thousands of Jews who were trying to survive in hiding, seeking hiding places, and paying for their upkeep and medical care. In September 1943, four months after the Warsaw ghetto was completely destroyed, Irena (then known by her underground name of Jolanta) was appointed director of Zegota’s Department for the Care of Jewish Children. She exploited her contacts with orphanages and institutes for abandoned children to send Jewish children there. Convents offered the best opportunity for Jewish children to survive and be taken care of. The children were often given Christian names and taught Christian prayers in case they were tested. Irena wanted to preserve the children's Jewish identities, so she kept careful documentation listing their Christian names, given names, and current locations. She and her co-workers buried lists of the hidden children in jars in order to keep track of their original and new identities. The aim was to return the children to their original families, if still alive after the war.

Irena’s activities did not go unnoticed and on 18 October 1943, she was arrested by the Gestapo. The Gestapo took Irena to their headquarters and beat her brutally. Despite this, she refused to betray any of her comrades or the children they rescued. She was placed in the Pawiak prison, where she was subjected to further interrogations and beatings, and from there on 13 November taken to another location, to be executed by firing squad. Her life was saved, however, because the German guards escorting her were bribed, and she was released on the way to the execution. Even then, her brush with death did not deter her from continuing her underground activities. Forced into hiding, she adopted the name Klara Dabrowska and lived with her uncle for a time. Irena returned to Warsaw during its 1944 uprising, working as a nurse in a field hospital, where a number of Jews were hidden among other patients. She continued to work as a nurse until the Germans left Warsaw, retreating before the advancing Soviet troops.

After World War Two

The hospital where Irena was working ran out of resources so she hitchhiked in military trucks to Lublin, to request funds from the communist government established there. Irena then helped Maria Palester to reorganize the hospital as the Warsaw's Children Home. She resumed other social work activities and was soon promoted, becoming head of the Department of Social Welfare in Warsaw's municipal government in December 1945. She ran her department according to radical ideas that she had learned from Helena Radlińska at the Free University. Irena and her co-workers also gathered all of the records with the names and locations of the hidden Jewish children and gave them to the Central Committee of Polish Jews. Unfortunately, almost all of the children's parents had been killed at the Treblinka extermination camp or had gone missing. Irena received the Gold Cross of Merit for the wartime saving of Jews in 1946 and was recognized by Yad Vashem as one of the Polish Righteous Among the Nations in 1965.She died on 12 May 2008, aged 98, and is buried in Warsaw's Powązki Cemetery.

Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. 2021. Be the light in the darkness. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.hmd.org.uk/what-is-holocaust-memorial-day/this-years-theme/ [Accessed 14 January 2021]

Sky History. 2021. Irena Sendler: The saviour of the Warsaw ghetto. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.history.co.uk/article/irena-sendler-the-saviour-of-the-warsaw-ghetto [Accessed 14 January 2021)

Yad Vashem. 2021. "Women of Valor" - Stories of Women Who Rescued Jews During the Holocaust -Irena Sendler (Poland). [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/righteous-women/sendler.asp [Accessed 14 January 2021]