Irena Sendler
Irena Stanisawa Sendler, also known as Irena Sendlerowa in Poland, nom de guerre Jolanta (15 February 1910 - 12 May 2008), was a Polish humanitarian, social worker, and nurse who served in the Polish Underground Resistance in German-occupied Warsaw during World War II. She was the head of the children's section of Żegota, the Polish Council to Aid Jews (Polish: Rada Pomocy Żydom), beginning in October 1943.
Sendler worked as a social activist associated with the Free Polish University in the 1930s. She worked for the City of Warsaw's Department of Social Welfare and Public Health from 1935 to October 1943. During the war, she participated in conspiratorial activities such as rescuing Jews, primarily as part of a network of mostly female workers and volunteers from that department. Sendler and dozens of others were involved in smuggling Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto, then providing them with false identity documents and shelter with willing Polish families or in orphanages and other care facilities, including Catholic nun convents, thereby saving those children from the Holocaust.
The German occupiers suspected Sendler of being involved in the Polish Underground, and she was arrested by the Gestapo in October 1943. However, she managed to conceal a list of the names and locations of the rescued Jewish children, preventing this information from falling into the hands of the Gestapo. Despite torture and imprisonment, Sendler never revealed anything about her work or the location of the children she rescued. She was sentenced to death but escaped on the day of her execution after Żegota bribed German officials to secure her release.
Sendler continued her social activism while also pursuing a government career in postwar communist Poland. The State of Israel recognized her as Righteous Among the Nations in 1965. Among the many decorations Sendler received were the Gold Cross of Merit awarded to her in 1946 for her efforts to save Jews and the Order of the White Eagle, Poland's highest honor, awarded late in Sendler's life for her wartime humanitarian efforts.
