The feat of Irena Sendler. Irena Sendler. The great feat of a little woman Children saved by Irena Sendler

Irena Sendler, an employee of the Warsaw Health Department, often visited the Warsaw ghetto, where she monitored sick children. Under this cover, she and her comrades took 2,500 children out of the ghetto, who were then transferred to Polish orphanages, private families and monasteries.

Babies were given sleeping pills, placed in small boxes with holes to prevent them from suffocating, and taken out in trucks that delivered disinfectants to the camp. Some children were taken out through the cellars of houses directly adjacent to the ghetto. Was used for escapes and drain hatches. Other children were taken out in bags, baskets, cardboard boxes.

Irene hid babies in a toolbox, older children under a tarp in the back of a truck. In addition, a dog was sitting in the back, trained to bark when the car was let into or out of the ghetto. According to another version, the dog was sitting in the cab, and the driver, when leaving the gate, stepped on her paw so that the dog would bark. The barking of the dog drowned out the noise or crying made by babies.

Irena Sendler wrote down the data of all the rescued children on narrow strips of thin paper and hid this list in a glass bottle. The bottle was buried under an apple tree in a friend's garden, with the aim of finding the children's relatives after the war.

On October 20, 1943, Irena was arrested on an anonymous denunciation. After torture, she was sentenced to death, but she was saved: the guards who accompanied her to the place of execution were bribed. In official papers, she was declared executed. Until the end of the war, Irena Sendler was in hiding, but continued to help Jewish children.

After the war, Sendler unearthed her cache of data on rescued children and handed them over to Adolf Berman (Chairman of the Central Committee of Jews in Poland). With the help of this list, the committee staff tracked down the children and handed them over to their relatives. Orphans were placed in Jewish orphanages. Later, a significant part of them was transported to Palestine, and eventually to Israel. After the establishment of the communist regime in Poland, Irena Sendler was persecuted by the authorities of the Polish People's Republic for her cooperation with the Government of Poland in exile and the Home Army.

When Sandler was interrogated in 1949, she was pregnant. The boy (Andrzej) was born (November 9, 1949) prematurely and died 11 days later.

Due to political differences, the Polish government did not release Irena Sendler from the country at the Israeli invitation. She was able to visit Israel only after the fall of the communist regime and the change of the Polish government.

The last years of her life, Irena Sendler lived in a one-room apartment in the center of Warsaw.

In 1965, the Israeli Holocaust Museum Yad Vashem awarded Irena Sendler the title of Righteous Among the Nations.

In 2003 she was awarded the Order of the White Eagle.

In 2007, the Polish President and Israeli Prime Minister nominated her for the Nobel Peace Prize for saving nearly 2,500 children's lives, but the prize was awarded to US Vice President Al Gore for her work in the field of global warming.

In 2007, she was awarded the International Order of the Smile.

Honorary citizen of the city of Warsaw and the city of Tarczyn.

Irena Sendler (Polish for Sendlerova) saved the lives of 2,500 children from the Warsaw Ghetto during the war. The children were from six months to 15 years old. Small children were given sleeping pills and taken out in a truck in boxes with holes for the passage of air. Older children were hidden in a bag and taken out in the same truck. It was not easy to persuade mothers to give up their children in the name of their salvation. Children were placed in monasteries and Polish families. It was very dangerous to shelter Jewish children - more than 2,000 Poles were executed for their mercy by the Nazis. Irena kept a card index - on thin sheets of paper she wrote down the names of the children, their parents and close relatives, as well as new, Polish names that were given to the children for their salvation and the addresses of the Polish families who gave shelter for these children. All this data was placed in glass jars and buried in the garden of a friend of Irena Sendler. After the war, the notes were handed over to the chairman of the Central Committee of Jews in Poland. Irena's information helped track down the children from the ghetto and find their relatives. But most of the children remained orphans and were taken to Israel, to orphanages.

Irena Sendler in 1942.

Warsaw ghetto.

In 1940, the Nazis organized a ghetto in a part of the territory of Warsaw, where there was a historically high percentage of the Jewish population. 113,000 Poles were evicted from there, and 138,000 Jews were settled in their place. By the end of the year, 440,000 people (37% of the city's population) lived in the ghetto on an area of 4.5%.

The maniac Hitler sentenced these people to death.

Food daily "norms" were calculated for the death of people from starvation and in 1941 amounted to 184 kcal (2 kg of bread per month) per person. People fell and died in the streets. But the Nazis were afraid of epidemics that could arise among weakened people and then spread throughout the occupied territory. This made it possible for employees of the Warsaw Health Department, among whom was Irena Sendler, to frequently visit the ghetto for sanitation.

Pictured is the Warsaw Ghetto. May 1941.

Irena Sendlerova.

Irena aroused great confidence among the inhabitants of the ghetto, otherwise the mothers would not have entrusted their babies to this woman. This little woman had to witness hundreds of personal tragedies, when mothers gave their children to her, knowing that they would never see them again. Although, according to Irena herself, there were times when her father agreed, but her mother was in no way ready to give up the most precious thing in the world. And tomorrow the whole family was sent to the Treblinka concentration camp, for destruction.

Irena was born on February 15, 1910 in the family of a doctor. Her father, Stanislav Kzhizhanovsky, died in 1917 saving people with typhus. Irena often recalled her father's words, spoken to her shortly before her death: "If you see that someone is drowning, you need to rush into the water to save, even if you can't swim."

Young Irena.

Irena understood that you can’t do much alone. According to her calculations, at least 12 people living outside the ghetto had to work to save one child: drivers, nurses, city government employees and, finally, foster families. The child first had to be somehow taken out of the carefully guarded territory of the ghetto, then he had to make fake documents proving his identity, ration cards were needed and people had to be found willing to risk their lives and the lives of relatives and friends to save someone else's child.

Zhegota (Zegota) .

Irena was the heart and soul of her group. She proved to be a talented organizer and performer. But without the help of the "big world" she would not have been able to save so many children from certain death. In September 1942, the Provisional Committee for Assistance to Jews was created in Poland, later, for secret purposes, renamed Żegota (name taken from the work of Adam Mickiewicz). Zhegota was organized by two women: the writer Zofia Kossak-Szczucka and the art critic Wanda Krahelska-Filippowicz. Interethnic relations in pre-war Poland were often tense. In the thirties, following the example of Nazi Germany, the rights of the Jewish population were significantly limited. For example, in universities there were special benches at the end of the classrooms intended exclusively for Jews. By the way, Irena Sendlerova strongly protested against such discrimination and she was suspended from university for 3 years. Poles and Jews lived side by side, but professing different religions, having different cultures and mentality, they were wary and often hostile towards each other. Nevertheless, the Polish intelligentsia and the Catholic Church, overcoming centuries of hostility, began to do everything in their power to save the Jews.

Zofya Kossak-Shchukskaya.

Wanda Krahelskaya-Filipovich.

Manifesto of Zofia Kossak-Szczucka.

“In the Warsaw ghetto, separated by a wall from the world, several hundred thousand suicide bombers await their death. They have no hope of salvation. Nobody comes to them with help. The number of murdered Jews has exceeded one million, and this figure is increasing every day. Everyone dies. Rich and poor, old people, women, men, youth, infants... They are only guilty of being born Jews condemned by Hitler to extermination. The world looks at these atrocities, the most terrible of all that history has known and is silent ... It is no longer possible to endure. Anyone who is silent in the face of the fact of these murders becomes an accomplice of the murderers himself. Who does not condemn - he allows. Therefore, let us raise our voices, Poles-Catholics! Our feelings towards the Jews will not change. We still consider them political, economic and ideological enemies of Poland. Moreover, we are aware that they hate us more than the Germans, blaming us for their misfortune. Why, on what basis - this remains the secret of the Jewish soul, this is confirmed by constant facts. The awareness of these feelings does not relieve us of the obligation to condemn the crimes... In the stubborn silence of the international Jewish community, in the vomit of German propaganda, which seeks to shift the blame for the massacre of Jews on Lithuanians and Poles, we feel an action hostile to us.

The child died right on the street.

Zhegota's activity.

Irena Sendlerova had an underground pseudonym "Iolanta". Her group had to come up with more and more new ways to save children. The children were hidden in bags and baskets with garbage (this is how Irena took her six-month-old adopted daughter) and in bales with bloody bandages taken to the city dumps. Older children were taken out through the sewers. One rescued boy recalled how he had to, after turning the sentry around the corner, run headlong to the hatch that opened from below and immediately closed above his head.

Unfortunate people were driven to destruction.

Zhegota's hard work required considerable funds, including for bribing Nazi officials and ransoming arrested underground workers. Money came from the Delegation, the representative office of the Polish government in exile (the "London" government), from the Bund, and from the Jewish National Committee. In total, Zhegota managed to save up to 60 thousand people, including at least 28 thousand in Warsaw. Already after the complete destruction of the ghetto, in May 1943, up to 4 thousand people were hiding in secret apartments in Warsaw at the same time.

The underground suffered heavy losses. About 700 members of Zhegota were shot. In 1943, Zofia Kossak-Szczucka was arrested and sent to Auschwitz, but she survived and even took part in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944.

Arrest of Irena Sendler.

On October 20, 1943, Irena Sendler was arrested on an anonymous denunciation. What does an anonymous denunciation mean? The scammer was not interested in material reward for the extradition of the underground, quite tangible at that time of famine. This vile little soul needed only a result - to send a brave woman to her death. Irena endured all the torture - her arms and legs were broken, but she did not betray anyone. The Gestapo did not even imagine that this little woman (less than 1m 50cm tall) was a key link in the salvation of Jewish children. In the end, Irena, sentenced to death, managed to be redeemed. The guard took her outside and told her to run. Members of Zhegota immediately picked up Irena and took her to a safe house. The next day she found her name in the list of executed Polish patriots published by the occupiers.

Problems with the new authorities.

Irena Sendler, who was engaged in the underground exclusively in saving children, did not take part in the civil war that broke out, but nevertheless, the secret services actively interrogated her, a pregnant woman, which ended in premature birth and the death of her little son, who did not live even two weeks. Sendler was in danger of a death sentence due to the fact that her activities were funded by the "London" government. When Irena's daughter grew up and wanted to go to college, she was not accepted because of Sendler's activities during the war.

In 1965, the Israeli National Holocaust and Heroism Memorial honored Irena Sendler with its highest honor - the title of Righteous Among the Nations and invited her to Israel. But the communist government did not let her out of the country. And in general, in Poland they learned about Irena's feat only in 2000, when 4 American schoolgirls who began researching the life of Irena Sandler at the suggestion of a history teacher wrote a play about her - "Life in a Bank", and then, with the help of the international press, made it a feat known to the whole world.

Grown-up rescued children with Irena Sendler.

Irena became the national heroine of Poland. In 2003, she received the country's highest award, the Order of the White Eagle. In 2006, the President of Poland and the Prime Minister of Israel jointly submitted her candidacy for the Nobel Peace Prize. But the Nobel Committee made a shameful decision to award the prize to US Vice President A. Gore for a series of lectures on global warming, for which he received a lot of money. And the modest heroine huddled with her family in a one-room apartment. This once again shows that big awards usually do not go to those who deserve them.

Frame from the film.

In 2009 (a year after her death), the film "The Braveheart of Irena Sendler" was released. It is worth seeing, although it requires good nerves.

She always smiled.

I shared with you the information that I "dug up" and systematized. At the same time, he has not become impoverished at all and is ready to share further, at least twice a week. If you find errors or inaccuracies in the article, please let us know. My e-mail address: [email protected] I will be very grateful.

When the German fascists occupied Poland in 1939, Irena Sendlerova organized the secret transfer of young children from the Warsaw ghetto to freedom. In doing so, she risked her own life, since helping Jews was considered a crime and punishable by death.

In 1942, Irena Sendlerova joined the Żegota resistance movement, which operated in the Polish capital. There were 20 people in her group. In four years, they managed to rescue a total of 2,500 children.

Jews were forbidden to leave the territory of the ghetto under pain of death. The kids were taken out in ambulances, carried out through the sewers, and once Sendlerova even hid the child under her skirt.

In 1943, the Nazis burned down the Warsaw Ghetto, dooming all its inhabitants to death.

Torture in the Gestapo

In October 1943, Irena was arrested. She withstood torture in the Gestapo and refused to give the names of the children taken from the ghetto.

The Nazis sentenced her to death. On the day of the execution, the underground managed to bribe the SS guards and save their comrade-in-arms.

According to BBC Warsaw correspondent Adam Easton, Irena Sendlerova was categorically opposed to her life being called "heroic". She said that she had done too little and therefore her conscience tormented her.

According to her, the hardest thing for her was to persuade her parents to decide to separate from their children in order to save their lives.

In 2007 Sendlerova was nominated for Nobel Peace Prize . However, the awards commission turned out to be utterly corrupt - She was not elected.

Received her award Al Gore - for a slideshow on global warming... in the hope that he will become president of the US. A year later, he received the award Barack Obama for their campaign promises.

The Polish parliament declared her a national heroine - "for saving the most defenseless victims of Nazi ideology - Jewish children." The resolution was adopted unanimously.

In the 1980s, she was awarded the title of "Righteous Among the World" in Israel.

Irena Sendlerova died in a Warsaw hospital at the age of 98. Her daughter announced her death.

http://news.bbc.co.uk

The feat of Irena Sendler

This grandmother - God's dandelion is called Irena Sendler. Do you know who she is? Most probably not. Few people knew about it until 2007, when she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. But, unfortunately, she lost. And this perfectly described the neglected state of this prestigious award, its politicization and formality. During the Second World War, as an employee of the Warsaw Health Department, she visited the Warsaw Ghetto, where she looked after sick children. Under this cover she, risking her life, took 2,500 children out of the ghetto and thereby saved them from death.

This fact does not fit in my head. This is something unearthly and even mystical. Imagine, one small, very fragile and weak woman, risking everything, saves small children every day from certain death - about 2500 souls in total(in the internet there is information about 3000 rescued people). Yes this love in its purest form! Dimensionless, unrestricted, selfless. We can admire this, but it is difficult for us to understand, because we have long been different.

She was born on February 15, 1910 in Warsaw. During the Second World War, she was an employee of the Warsaw Health Department and, in addition, a member of the Polish underground organization - the Council for Aid to Jews (Żegota).

To be able to enter the ghetto, Irene managed to get for herself and for her accomplice, Irene Schultz, official passes from the Warsaw Department of Epidemic Control. Together they visited the ghetto every day, and soon they managed to establish useful contacts there, which helped them to take their children out of the ghetto in the future. Together with a friend, they brought food, medicine, money and clothes to the ghetto. Later, they managed to involve other caring organizations in this process. However, given the terrible conditions in the ghetto, where 5,000 people died a month from starvation and disease, they decided to help people, especially children, get out of the ghetto. It was not an easy task. And over time, it became even more difficult - the Germans sealed all possible exits in all directions: underground passages, holes in the ghetto wall, etc. - which Irena used in the beginning for the withdrawal of children. She bribed some guards when she had money, and sometimes she managed to simply throw children over the ghetto fence. Very often, she hid babies in her tool box, and older children in the back of her truck under a tarp. In the car, she always carried a dog, which she trained to bark at the guards when the car was let into or out of the ghetto. The barking of a dog drowned out the noise or crying of babies.

sendler always carefully noted on paper, in coded form, the original names of the rescued children and stored this information in glass jars, which she buried in her garden. She did it for to at some point in the future find the parents of these children and restore families. End up in these jars in the garden Sendler has the names of 2,500 children.

On 20 October 1943 sendler was arrested by the Gestapo. She was subjected to beatings and torture during which both legs and both arms were broken. But the Gestapo failed to break her spirit: they did not receive any information from her. Since then, sendler could only walk on crutches. Gestapo sentenced Irena Sendler to death, but she was saved by the organization Zegota who bribed a guard to put her name on the list of those already shot. So until the end of the war Irene Sendler had to hide.

Much later, after the end of the war, she said: “I could have done more, saved more children .. and this regret for not done will follow me until the end of my life.” Well, what can I say. Irena Sendler is a saint!

She died in 2008, at the age of 98, shortly after losing the Nobel Peace Prize, which the Nobel Committee gave to US Vice President Al Gore, who lost the presidential election. Circus.

The life of Irena Sendler is a very difficult, but surprisingly beautiful story. A story of great love, incredible courage and extraordinary valor.

http://adsence.kiev.ua

, Irena Sendlerova(Polish Irena Sendlerowa(full name Irena Stanislava Sendlerova(Polish Irena Stanisława Sendlerowa), born Krzyzhanovskaya(Polish Krzyzanowska)); February 15, 1910, Warsaw - May 12, 2008, Warsaw) - Polish resistance activist who saved 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw ghetto.

Early life

Irena was born in the family of Stanisław Krzyżanowski (1877-1917) and Janina Karolina Grzybowska (1885-1944). Before the birth of Irena, her father participated in underground activities during the 1905 revolution, was a member of the teaching staff and was a socialist doctor who treated mainly poor Jews, whom other doctors refused to help. He died of typhus, caught in patients. After his death, members of the Jewish community offered to help his wife pay for Irena's education. Sendler entered the University of Warsaw to study Polish literature and joined the Polish Socialist Party.

The Second World War

During World War II, Irena Sendler, an employee of the Warsaw Health Department and a member of the Polish underground organization (under the pseudonym Iolanta) - the Council for Helping Jews (Zhegota), often visited the Warsaw ghetto, where she monitored sick children. Under this cover, she and her comrades took 2,500 children out of the ghetto, who were then transferred to Polish orphanages, private families and monasteries.

She hid babies in a toolbox, older children under a tarp in the back of a truck. In addition, a dog was sitting in the back, trained to bark when the car was let into or out of the ghetto; according to another version, the dog was sitting in the cab, and the driver, when leaving the gate, stepped on her paw so that the dog would bark. The barking of the dog drowned out the noise or crying made by babies.

On October 20, 1943, she was arrested on an anonymous denunciation. After torture, she was sentenced to death, but she was saved: the guards who accompanied her to the place of execution were bribed. In official papers, she was declared executed. Until the end of the war, Irena Sendler was in hiding, but continued to help Jewish children.

After the war

After the war, Sendler unearthed her cache of data on rescued children and handed them over to Adolf Berman, chairman of the Central Committee of Polish Jews from 1947 to 1949. With the help of this list, the committee staff tracked down the children and handed them over to their relatives. Orphans were placed in Jewish orphanages. Later, a significant part of them was transported to Palestine, and eventually to Israel. After the establishment of the communist regime in Poland, Irena Sendler was persecuted by the authorities of the Polish People's Republic for her cooperation with the Government of Poland in exile and the Home Army. When Sandler was interrogated in 1949, she was pregnant. The boy (Andrzej) was born (November 9, 1949) prematurely and died 11 days later.

Due to political disagreements with Israel, the Polish government did not let Irena Sendler leave the country at the Israeli invitation. She was able to visit Israel only after the fall of the communist regime and the change of the Polish government.

Irena Sendler has been married twice. In 1932, she married Mieczysław Sendler (1910-2005), but before the start of the war they separated, although they did not file a divorce. During the war Mieczysław was taken prisoner. After his repatriation in 1947, they divorced and in the same year Irena married Stefan Zgrzhembsky (in reality, a Jew Adam Zelnikier, 1905-?), whom she met in her student years and an affair with whom she began just before the German attack . They had three children: Andrzej, Adam (1951-1999) and Janina. They divorced in 1959.

The last years of her life, Irena Sendler lived in a one-room apartment in the center of Warsaw.

Awards

In 1965, the Israeli Holocaust Museum Yad Vashem awarded Irena Sendler the title of Righteous Among the Nations.

In 2003 she was awarded the Order of the White Eagle.

In 2007, the Polish President and Israeli Prime Minister nominated her for the Nobel Peace Prize for saving nearly 2,500 children's lives, but the award was given to US Vice President Al Gore for her work in the field of global warming, as the prize is awarded for actions committed in over the past two years.

In 2007, she was awarded the international Order of Smile, becoming the oldest recipient.

Honorary citizen of the city of Warsaw and the city of Tarczyn.

perpetuation of memory

In art

In April 2009, the television film "The Braveheart of Irena Sendler", filmed in autumn 2008 in Latvia, was released on American television screens. The role of Irena was played by New Zealand actress Anna Paquin.
Irena's life was also reflected in the songs. For example, the Irish group Sixteen Dead Men in 2009 performed the song "Irena" (HFWH Records).

In numismatics

The portrait of Irena Sendler, together with Zofia Kossak-Szczucka and Matilda Getter, is placed on the Polish silver coins of the Polish Righteous Among the Nations (see image).

Regular article

Irena Sendler (2005). Photo by Mariusz Kubik
Irena Sendler
Irena Sendlerowa

Name at birth:	Irena Krzhizhanovska
Occupation:
Date of Birth:
Place of Birth:
Citizenship:
Date of death:
Place of death:
Awards and prizes:	Order of the White Eagle

Irena Sendler (Irena Sendlerova, Irena Sendlerowa; 1910, Otwock, Poland - May 12, 2008, Warsaw) - Polish resistance activist, Righteous Among the Nations.

early years

Irena Sendler (Krzyzanowska) was born in 1910 in Otwock, about 25 km southeast of Warsaw. She was strongly influenced by her father, a doctor who was one of the first Polish socialists. His patients were mostly poor Jews.

The feat of Irena Sendler

She wrote down the coded data of all 2,500 rescued children and hid this list in a glass jar buried under an apple tree in a neighbor's yard, hoping to find the children's relatives after the war.

On October 20, 1943, she was arrested on an anonymous denunciation. She was severely beaten, both legs and arms were broken, and she was sentenced to death. She was saved - the guards who led her to the place of execution were bribed. In official papers, she was declared executed. Until the end of the war, she lived in hiding, but continued to help Jewish children.

After the war

After the war, she dug up a cache of jars and tried to find the parents of the rescued children. However, most of the parents died in the camps.

After the establishment of the communist regime in Poland, Irena Sendler was arrested by the communist authorities for her collaboration with the Polish government in exile and the Home Army. When Sandler was interrogated in 1948, she was in her last month of pregnancy. The child was born prematurely and died.

In 1965, one of the first to receive the title of Righteous Among the Nations from the Israeli Holocaust Museum Yad Vashem. The Polish government did not let Irena Sendler out of the country at the Israeli invitation. She was able to visit Israel only after the fall of the communist regime.

The last years of her life, Irena Sendler lived in a one-room apartment in the center of Warsaw. She passed away on May 12, 2008 at the age of 98.

International recognition

The children knew only her underground nickname Iolanta. In 2000, a group of high school students from the Kansas town of Unittown, led by their history teacher, researched Irena Sendler's exploits and won a science project competition. The material of their work has received wide international fame; Irena Sendler attracted the attention of the press and the world community. She was found by those of the rescued children who remembered the face and saw it in photographs in the press.

In 2003 she was awarded the Order of the White Eagle. In 2006, the Polish President and Israeli Prime Minister nominated her for the Nobel Peace Prize, but the prize was awarded to US Vice President Al Gore.

In the fall of 2008, Irena Sendler's Braveheart was shown in the United States. He talked about a woman who died quietly in May of that year in Warsaw at the age of 99. Most of the viewers, while watching the picture, could not hold back their tears, the story of Irena Sendler was so touching and tragic.

Childhood

Irena Kshizhanovskaya was born into the family of a doctor who was a member of the PPS, who ran a hospital and often provided medical assistance to poor Jews who were unable to pay for treatment. Even before the birth of his daughter, he was an active participant in anti-government actions. When Irene was 7 years old, her father died of typhus, having contracted it from patients. The Jewish community, highly appreciating the merits of Dr. Krzyzhanovsky, decided to help his family by offering to pay for Irena's education until she reaches the age of 18. The girl's mother refused, because she knew how hard many of her husband's former patients live, but she told her daughter about it. So, gratitude and love forever settled in Irena's heart, which later gave life to thousands of children.

At the university, the girl joined the Polish Socialist Party, as she wanted to continue her father's work.

In 1932, Irena married Mieczysław Sendler, but the marriage did not last long, although they did not file an official divorce.

Feat

When the Holocaust began in Poland, Irena Sendler was an employee of the Warsaw Health Authority. Along with this, she was a member of the Polish underground organization "Zhegota", which was engaged in helping Jews.

Due to her professional activities, the young woman regularly visited the Warsaw ghetto and helped sick children. Using this cover, Irena Sendler and other members of the "Zhegota" rescued 2,500 Jewish babies, who were then transferred to monasteries, private families and orphanages.

According to the recollections of participants in those events, babies were placed in boxes with holes, after drinking sleeping pills, and then they were taken away from the ghetto in cars that delivered disinfectants. As for the older children, they were carried out in bags and baskets, taken out through the basements of houses and buildings adjacent to the area reserved for Jewish habitation.

Arrest

Irena Sendler also made sure that after the war the rescued children could find their parents. She wrote their names on slips of paper and put them in a glass jar, which she buried in a friend's garden.

In 1943, Irena Sendler was arrested, the reason was an anonymous denunciation. A young woman was tortured, trying to find out who from her entourage led the Resistance movement or simply belonged to its underground organization. At the same time, Irena was shown a thick folder with denunciations and reports about her activities, signed by people she knew well. The goal of the Nazis was to find out the names of other participants in the children's rescue operations and the places where the children were hidden. Despite the beatings, the fragile Irena did not betray her comrades-in-arms and did not tell the Gestapo where the lists with the names of little Jews were located, since in this case they would be sent to and die.

"Execution" and escape

Failing to achieve a result, the Nazis sentenced Irena to death. Fortunately, Sendler survived - members of the anti-fascist resistance in Poland saved her by bribing the guards. Those, in turn, reported to the command that the execution had taken place, so Irena was not wanted.

According to the recollections of the woman, before the execution she was summoned for the last interrogation. The soldier accompanying her did not bring Irena to the Gestapo building, but pushed her into an alley and ordered her to run. There were Polish underground workers who took her to a safe place. “In memory” of her stay in Nazi dungeons, Irene was left with poor health, and she spent the end of her life in a wheelchair.

Mission Completion

Irene Sendler had to go into hiding until the very end of the war. After the liberation of Poland, she was able to pass on the data on the rescued children to Adolf Berman, who from 1947 to 1949 was chairman of the Central Committee of the Jews of Poland. Thanks to a long search, it was possible to reunite the families that became victims of the Holocaust. As for the orphaned children, after a long ordeal, they were finally transferred to Israel.

Life in the postwar years

It would seem that with the advent of peace in Europe, the brave heart of Irena Sendler can calm down, and she will finally live a calm family life. However, fate decided to deal her another blow: the state security organs of the PPR found out about her connections with the Home Army and began to persecute her. In 1949, during a tough interrogation, a pregnant Irena gave birth prematurely to a child who died a few days later.

belated recognition

Although over time, the Polish authorities left Irena Sendler alone, she felt the hostile attitude of the authorities towards her person until the fall of the communist regime. So, when in 1965 Israel's Yad Vashem decided to award Irena Sendler the honorary title of Righteous Among the Nations, she was not allowed to visit the country in which the boys and girls she had once saved lived, who had already become adults and considered her their second mother.

Only in 1983, the Polish authorities lifted the ban on her travel abroad, and Irena Sendler was able to visit Israel, where she planted her tree on the alley of memory.

And even after that, few people in the world knew that an old woman lives in a modest apartment in Warsaw, who has accomplished a feat that deserves all the highest awards and honors. However, fate wanted Irena Sendler to live to see the day when her story is known in different parts of the world.

Moreover, everything happened by pure chance in 1999, and the children again became the initiator - four schoolgirls from the American town of Uniontown. They were preparing a report for the History Day project, and the teacher showed them a five-year-old newspaper article titled "The Other Schindler." The interested girls began to look for information about Irena Sendler and found that she was alive. With the help of their relatives and teachers, they wrote the play Life in a Bank, which was staged in various theaters in the United States, Canada, and later in Poland. The girls even came to Warsaw, where they saw their idol. Their friendship with Irena Sendler continued for several years, during which they repeatedly visited Mother

Awards

The merits of Irena Sendler were very belatedly appreciated by the Polish government, which in 2003 awarded her the Order of the White Eagle. Before Sendler, European monarchs, including Peter the Great, famous military leaders and the Pope, became holders of this highest award. The order was restored in Poland only in 1992, and among those awarded over the past 24 years, hardly anyone was as worthy of it as Mrs. Sendler.

In addition, a year before Irena's death, the Prime Minister of Israel proposed to the Nobel Committee to award her the Peace Prize. Sendler's award did not take place, as the committee at that time did not begin to change the rules that require the award to be awarded for actions that have been committed within the past two years.

As one of the Polish journalists wrote, "the prize has been dishonored." Those presenting it went around the most deserving person to honor Al Gore for his presentation on global warming.

And in 2007, Pani Irena was awarded the Order of a Smile medal. As always in Irena's life, children intervened: she was presented as a contender for an award by a boy, Shimon Plotsennik from Zielona Góra. The Order of Smile was established in Poland in 1968 and is given to people who bring joy to children. In 1979, the award was given international status, and since then applicants for it have been selected by a commission consisting of representatives of 24 countries.

Irena Sendler's Braveheart movie

The motion picture, which has already been mentioned, was filmed in Latvia. When American journalists told Irena that they were going to make a film about her life during the war years, she said she agreed. At the same time, the woman asked that the picture be true and show the Americans what that war really was, what the Warsaw ghetto looked like and what happened there. The role of Irena Sendler in the film was played by New Zealand actress Anna Paquin, who in 1994 was awarded the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. According to the audience, the film turned out to be very poignant and truthful. The picture was also liked by Irena Sendler's daughter, Yanina, who was initially against the idea of creating a cinematic version of her mother's biography.

Resistance movement in Poland

Talking about the feat of Sendler, it should be understood that a courageous woman could not act alone. According to Pani Irena herself, to save one child, she needed the help of at least 12 people: drivers, medical workers, security guards, shelter workers, officials who issue fake documents, and others. The role of Polish nuns was quite special. It is known that 500 children rescued by Irena Sendler could only survive thanks to their help. At the same time, many sisters paid for their Christian humanism, shown in relation to children of another religion, with their lives and even became martyrs. So, in 1944, in the Warsaw cemetery, the Nazis doused with gasoline and burned alive a group of nuns who helped Jews.

No less touching is the story of how Wojciech Zhukavsky and Aleksander Zelverowicz hid 40 children from the ghetto in the zoo, where they had to hide among enclosures with animals.

Now you know who Irena Sendler was, a film about which you should definitely watch, especially since it is available in Russian translation.