During the World War II German occupation of Poland, Irena Sendler lived in Warsaw (prior to that, she lived in Otwock and Tarczyn) while working for urban Social Welfare Departments. As early as 1939, when the Germans invaded Poland, she began helping Jews by offering them food and shelter. Irena and her helpers created over 3,000 false documents to help Jewish families, prior to joining the organized resistance of Żegota and the children's division. Helping Jews was very risky—in German-occupied Poland, all household members risked a death sentence if they were found to be hiding any Jews. This punishment was more severe than those applied in other occupied European countries.
In December 1942, the newly created Children's Section of the Żegota (Council for Aid to Jews), nominated her (under her cover name Jolanta) to head its children's department. As an employee of the Social Welfare Department, she had a special permit to enter the Warsaw Ghetto, to check for signs of typhus, something the Nazis feared would spread beyond the ghetto. During the visits, she wore a Star of David as a sign of solidarity with the Jewish people and so as not to call attention to herself.
In December 1942, the newly created Children's Section of the Żegota (Council for Aid to Jews), nominated her (under her cover name Jolanta) to head its children's department. As an employee of the Social Welfare Department, she had a special permit to enter the Warsaw Ghetto, to check for signs of typhus, something the Nazis feared would spread beyond the ghetto. During the visits, she wore a Star of David as a sign of solidarity with the Jewish people and so as not to call attention to herself.
She cooperated with the Children's Section of the Municipal Administration, linked with the RGO (Central Welfare Council), a Polish Relief Organization tolerated under German supervision. She organized the smuggling of Jewish children from the Ghetto, carrying them out in boxes, suitcases and trolleys. Under the pretext of conducting inspections of sanitary conditions during a typhoid outbreak, Sendler visited the ghetto and smuggled out babies and small children in ambulances and trams, sometimes disguising them as packages. She also used the old courthouse of the edge of the Warsaw Ghetto (still standing) as one of the main routes of smuggling children out. The children were placed with Polish families, the Warsaw orphanage of the Sisters of the Family of Mary or Roman Catholic convents such as the Sisters Little Servants of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Mary at Turkowice and Chotomów. Some were smuggled to priests in parish rectories where they could be further hidden. She hid lists of their names in jars, in order to keep track of their original and new identities. Żegota assured the children that, when the war was over, they must be returned to Jewish relatives.
In 1943, Sendler was arrested by the Gestapo, severely tortured, and sentenced to death. Żegota saved her by bribing German guards on the way to her execution. She was left in the woods, unconscious and with broken arms and legs. She was listed on public bulletin boards as among those executed. For the remainder of the war, she lived in hiding, but continued her work for the Jewish children. After the war, she dug up the jars containing the children's identities and began an attempt to find the children and return them to living parents. However, almost all the children's parents had died at the Treblinka extermination camp.
In 2007, considerable publicity accompanied a nomination of Sendler for the Nobel Peace Prize. Although failed nominees for the award are not publicly announced by the Nobel organization for 50 years, this publicity focused a spotlight upon Sendler and her wartime contribution. The 2007 award, however, was presented to Al Gore, former Vice President of the United States, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Al Gore won, for doing a slide show on Global Warming.
