Illustration

Earlier this year, Irena Sendler died. She was 98 years old. You may not know Irena Sendler. There’s really no reason you would. But Irena was a remarkable woman. In 1940, German Nazis began rounding up Jews and sending them to the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland. By 1942 it was clear that most if not all of the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto were destined for concentration camps and death. Irena passed herself off as a nurse and social worker, entered the Warsaw Ghetto, and began smuggling Jewish children out to safety. She and her friends would smuggle children out in boxes, suitcases, sacks, and even coffins. The children would then be given new non-Jewish identities and placed with families or in Catholic orphanages. The children’s real names were recorded on scraps of paper and buried in a jar in Irena’s friend’s garden. Irena risked death each time she helped one of these little children. In 1943 was arrested and tortured by the Gestapo, but refused to give the names of any of her helpers or where the jars were buried. Irena was released when her friends bribed some Nazi officials, but was left lying in the woods with broken legs and arms. As soon as she had healed sufficiently, Irena once again began smuggling Jewish children out of the Ghetto. Altogether, Irena saved around 3,000 Jews from death, most of them children. Before her death, Irena disagreed with someone who called her a hero. “The term ‘hero’ irritates me greatly,” she said. “The opposite is true. I continue to have pangs of conscience that I did so little.” Irena also said, “Every child saved with my help is the justification of my existence on the Earth and not a title to glory.”