Irena Sendler, My Hero

by Kitty Nash

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Irena Sendler, My Hero

Kitty Nash

Who is your hero? Is it someone who helped build our country

like George Washington or Abraham Lincoln? Is it someone who

sought out new worlds like Columbus or Marco Polo? Is it someone

who stood up for justice like Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King, Jr.? Is it

someone who spread love like Mother Theresa or Pope John Paul II? Is

it someone who ventured into space like Neil Armstrong or Sally Ride?

Is it someone who excels at sports like Michael Phelps or Mia Hamm?

Is it someone who fights for freedom like the men and women of our

Armed Forces? Is it someone who risks his or her life protecting the

people in our community like our firefighters and police officers?

My hero is a tiny little lady. Not even five feet tall, with grey hair

and blue eyes, she doesn’t think she’s a hero, but to me and to 2500

children like me, she is. When I was six years old, my hero saved my

life. My hero’s name is Irena Sendler.

Irena was born in the old city of Warsaw, Poland, on February 15,

1910. Her father Stanislaw Krzyzanowski was a doctor. He moved his

wife and daughter to Otwock, about 15 miles from Warsaw where he

became the director of a hospital. Otwock was a spa town that had

many hospitals and clinics. People came from all around Poland to

recover from various illnesses. Dr. Krzyzanowski taught his daughter

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the importance of loving and caring for

others. He often treated people the

other doctors in town refused to touch –

the poor Jewish patients.

In 1917, when Irena was just 7, a

typhoid epidemic broke out in Otwock.

The disease spread from person to

person, from family to family, from

neighborhood to neighborhood. Many

people died each day from the disease.

Risking his own life, Dr. Krzyzanowski

worked tirelessly to save the victims of this epidemic. Unfortunately,

he soon caught the fever and died.

“I was taught,” she said of her father, “that if you see a person

drowning, you must jump into the water to save them, whether you

can swim or not. It is irrelevant what is his religion or nationality. One

must help him. It is a need of the heart.”

Dedicating her life to helping others, Irena went to college and

became a social worker. In 1939 the German army invaded Poland.

The Social Welfare Department where Irena worked operated food

kitchens where the poor, the homeless, the widows, and the orphans

could come for meals, clothing, and money.

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As the German soldiers took control of the city, they took away

houses and businesses and valuables from the Jewish people. Many

families suddenly found themselves poor and hungry. Irena and her

friends wrote down pretend Christian names for the Jewish families

they helped. In order to trick the German soldiers, they wrote down

that the Jewish families had highly contagious illnesses like typhus and

tuberculosis. The German soldiers were afraid of catching those

diseases, so they didn’t check

up on them.

I was only three when the

German army invaded, but I

remember the hunger. Before

they came, I had lived in a nice

apartment with pretty clothes

and plenty to eat. After the

German soldiers took our home

and belongings, we had to go to

a place with many people and

stand in line for ages to get some food. We took it to a small room we

were renting. All my toys, except for one doll, were gone. I wore the

same dress even though it was soon too small.

In December of 1942 Irena began working for a secret

organization, Zegota, that wanted to help the Jewish people. Two

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years earlier, all the Jewish residents of Warsaw, about 500,000, had

been rounded up and made to live in a 16 block section of the town

called the ghetto. Life in the ghetto was terrible. High walls with

barbed wire at the top were built around the ghetto so no one could

get in or out. The only food available was what the German soldiers

brought in each day, and they didn’t bring in much. Soon many people

were hungry and sick. As many as 5000 people were dying each

month!

The ghetto was worse than the room we had been renting.

There were five families in one small apartment. We were hungry all

the time. We had lice in our hair and fleas in our clothes. I spent much

of my time picking off those bugs. My mother wouldn’t take me out of

the apartment because the streets

were filled with dead and dying

people. It was horrible.

Hundreds were being deported.

They were rounded up by soldiers and

put on trains to Treblinka. Most

Jewish people believed that they were moving to a new town where

they would be given homes and land, but instead, Treblinka was a Nazi

killing center where Jews were being murdered as soon as they got off

the trains.

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Irena was put in charge of Zegota’s children’s bureau. She

convinced friends to help her rescue children from the ghetto. She and

her partner Irena Schultz got passes from the welfare department in

charge of controlling epidemics allowing them to go into the ghetto to

help stop the spread of the deadly diseases. The German soldiers

were afraid of getting sick, so they allowed Irena and her partner to

bring medicines into the ghetto and to take sick patients to the

hospital.

“When the war started, all of Poland was drowning in a sea of

blood. But most of all, it affected the Jewish nation. And within that

nation, it was the children who suffered most. That’s why we needed

to give our hearts to them,” Irena

explained.

Using the code name Jolanta,

Irena and her friends brought Jewish

children out of the ghetto. First, Irena

had to convince parents that their

children would be safer hiding with

Polish families or in orphanages or

convents. Many families were afraid

that the Poles would try to make their

children become Christian or that they would want to keep the children

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when the war was over. Irena told the parents that the foster families

would promise to return the children to their real families when the war

was over and that they would remain Jewish, although the children

would probably have to pretend to be Christian. Many still did not

agree. Many children died with their families.

“There were terrible scenes,” Irena said. “One mother and I

wanted a child to leave the ghetto while the father did not. They asked

what was the guarantee. What kind of guarantee could I give them.

Here I am, a stranger, asking them to place their child in my care.

They ask if I can guarantee their safety. I have to answer no.

Sometimes they would give me their child. Other times they would say

come back. I would come back a few days later and the family had

already been deported.”

My parents argued

fiercely over whether or

not they should let me

go. My mother insisted

that I be saved. My

father wasn’t happy

about the idea. It was his

job to protect his family,

he insisted. My

grandfather was furious,

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declaring that no granddaughter of his was going to be raised by

Gentiles. He was determined that I should not be given to a non-Jewish

family. My mother won the argument. She took my doll and

embroidered my real name under the doll’s hair. “So you won’t forget

who you really are,” she said holding me tight.

Irena and her friends had many ways of getting children out of

the ghetto. Older children were taught Catholic prayers and given nice

clothes. One building that shared a wall with the ghetto was the city

courthouse. Polish police officers were bribed to allow the children to

sneak through the underground halls. They met Irena’s helpers in the

lobby of the courthouse and walked out the front door with new

Christian identities.

A Catholic church also shared a wall of the ghetto. One church

door opened into the ghetto, and another door opened to the city.

Jewish children would go into the church where a priest would give

them new identity papers showing that they were Christians. One of

Irena’s friends would take the children from the church. The children

left the church with new names and new families.

Little children and babies were smuggled out in anything big

enough to hold them. Babies were often given medicine to make them

sleep so they wouldn’t be heard crying. They were hidden in

toolboxes, doctor’s bags, suitcases, potato sacks, and trash wagons.

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They were driven out hidden behind the back seats of empty streetcars

that were returning to the garage for the night.

I was small for my age. I remember liking Irena. She had such a

kind face and a warm voice. She wasn’t tall enough to be scary, but

she was a grown-up, so I trusted her. I was wrapped up in a heavy

sack and put under the floorboards of an ambulance. There was a dog

I remember. It let me pet it before I got into the bag. I was under the

floor right by the driver. The dog sat on top of me. We were stopped

at the gate by the Nazi guards. My heart began to beat so loudly I

thought the guards could hear it. I think I might have cried. As soon

as we stopped, the dog started barking. He barked and howled until

the guards let us go. When we got to the store where I would be

hidden for the day, I asked the driver why it had barked so much. He

told me that he had trained it to bark in case I made any noise. The

guards couldn’t hear me if the dog was making so much noise. I

hugged the dog tight before going into the store.

The children were taken to a safe place, then taken to a first

family to stay with while they learned their new names and the names

of their new pretend

families. Finally they were

taken to homes with their

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new families or to Catholic orphanages or convents where the nuns

took care of them.

Irena wanted to make sure that the children could be found at

the end of the war. She wrote down each child’s name, the child’s new

name, and where the child would be living. She made two copies of

the list and buried them in jars in her neighbor’s yard under an apple

tree. She did all of this right across the street from the building where

the German soldiers were living!

My name was on that list. I was placed in Kobyika, a nearby

town, with an old woman. I was supposed to tell everyone that my

name was Genia. Racinska was my grandmother. My mother’s name

was Switala. She was working for the Germans and couldn’t care for

me. I used to be so afraid of making a mistake that when anyone

asked me about myself, I hid behind Racinska. She told everyone that

I was painfully shy. People believed her, and I never made a mistake.

I lived with Racinska for three years. She had a garden behind

her house with chickens, geese (which bit!), and a goat. She fattened

me up with eggs and goat’s milk. We plucked the geese several times

in the summer (she plucked, I chased feathers), and filled up the most

scrumptiously comfortable feather beds that we slept on each night.

Knowing I was Jewish, she taught me to read from the Old Testament

of her Bible, the history of the Jewish People. Just in case, she also

taught me stories about Jesus.

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On October 20, 1943, German soldiers surrounded Irena’s home.

Terrified of what the soldiers would do to the hidden children, she gave

the list of names to her assistant who hid the list in her underwear.

The soldiers searched the house while the two terrified women

watched. They tore the house apart. In the end, they found nothing.

Irena’s assistant was allowed to leave, but they arrested Irena.

Irena was taken to Pawiak Prison. The guards tortured her,

trying to make her tell them about the others in her organization. She

refused to tell them anything. While working in the laundry of the

prison, Irena came up with a way to get back at the soldiers. She and

the other women put holes in the soldiers’ underwear. When the

women were caught, they were punished, but still Irena stayed strong.

Soldiers broke her legs and feet with wooden clubs. Even though the

pain was terrible, the only thing she would tell them was the false story

that all the workers had made up to tell in case they were captured.

She never revealed anything about Zegota or the children.

“I was quiet as a mouse. I would have rather died than disclose

anything about our operations,” she later said.

The Germans quit trying to get her to talk and decided just to kill

her. Some of her friends gave one of the guards a lot of money to let

her go. He wrote her name of a list of people who had been shot. The

list of executed prisoners was posted on public bulletin boards so the

Polish people would know what happened to people who worked

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against the Germans. Irena saw her own name on the list. She had to

hide for the rest of the war, but she continued to work to help save

more children.

Racinska was kind, but old. I had no one to play with. I was to

stay inside the house unless I was helping her in the garden. She

never let me play with other children or go shopping with her. I wasn’t

allowed to go school. I didn’t understand until I was older. If I had

said anything that sounded Jewish, everyone would have known she

was hiding a Jewish child, and we both would have been arrested and

killed. Racinska risked her life to save mine. I loved her for it.

She tried to make my life as pleasant as possible. When she

sewed clothes, she helped me sew clothes for my doll, and when she

sewed me a quilt, I made a matching doll quilt. I still have them today.

We would have tea parties with my doll and play checkers by the

fireplace. We made bread animals and funny shaped potato pancakes.

And she told me stories - Polish folk tales and fairy tales, stories from

the Jewish Bible and the Christian Bible, stories from her childhood and

her daughter’s childhood, and when they ran out, she made up stories

about what my life would be like after the war. Racinska spent her

days trying to keep me happy. I loved her for it.

When the war ended in 1945, Irena dug up the list of children’s

names. Unfortunately, most of the children’s families were dead.

Some children went to live with relatives. Some decided to stay with

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their adopted families. Many went to Israel. About 400 or more

children had disappeared and have never been found.

I waited and waited for my parents to come get me. Racinska

told me that I could stay with her if I wanted. I loved her, but I wanted

my parents back. I was almost 10 when my aunt Rachela came to get

me. Rachela had lived in Krakow. I had only seen her once before the

war, and I had been too young to remember. She had been sent to

Auschwitz, a terrible camp where hundreds of thousands of people had

died. Miraculously, she had managed to survive. My parents, my

grandparents, and all my other relatives were dead. She and I were

the only ones of our family left alive.

After the war, Irena and her first husband, Mieczyslaw Sendler

divorced. She married Stefan Zgrzembski and had three children.

The first baby boy died several days after his birth. Her son Adam

grew up, got married, and had a daughter, but died in 1999 at the age

of 48. Her youngest was a daughter

named Janina. Their father died when the

children were still young, and Irena worked

hard to support her family. Almost no one

knew what she had done during the war.

Aunt Rachela and I decided to move

to America. It took us three years to get a

visa, the permission required to move to

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another country. Once in the U.S., I wrote letters twice a year to

Racinska, telling her about my life and sending her pictures and gifts.

She died in 1983. I never went back to

Poland.

In 1965 an group in Israel called Yad

Vashem honored Irena, naming her one of

the “Righteous Among the Nations” as a

non-Jewish person who had helped save

Jews during the Holocaust. The Polish

government, which was Communist at the

time, did not allow her to go to Israel for

the ceremony in which a tree was planted in her honor. Still, almost no

one knew what a hero she was.

In 2000, four American teenage girls in Uniontown, Kansas, were

writing a play for a history contest. They found mention of Irena

Sendler and researched her story. They wrote a play called “Life in a

Jar”. It turned out to be an amazing success. The newspapers and

television picked up the story.

I sat stunned as I watched the television program about the girls.

The face in the photograph on the screen, the

young Irena Sendler, brought memories flooding

back. I recognized her! She was the woman who

had taken me out of the ghetto. I watched as the

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four American girls visited my hero in her apartment in Warsaw. She

was still tiny. Her brown hair was now silver, but her eyes were just as

blue.

I couldn’t afford to fly to Poland, so I called her on the phone. “I

remember your face,” I said, tears running down my cheeks. “You

took me out of the ghetto. You saved my life. You saved my children’s

lives and my children’s children’s lives. Thank you. You are my hero.”

“A hero is someone doing extraordinary things.” Irena said.

“What I did was not extraordinary. It was the normal thing to do.” I

believe that is what makes her such a hero. She didn’t agree. “Every

child saved with my help and the help of all the wonderful secret

messengers, who today are no longer living, is the justification of my

existence on this earth, and not a title to glory. We who were rescuing

children are not some kind of heroes. That

term irritates me greatly. The opposite is

true – I continue to have qualms of

conscience that I did so little. I could have

done more. This regret will follow me to my

death.” The 2500 children she rescued would

disagree.

Irena Sendler died on May 12, 2008, in

Warsaw, Poland. She was survived not only by her daughter and

granddaughter, but by the Jewish children she saved and their

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children, their grandchildren, and their great-grandchildren. For this,

she will always be my hero.

I remember her every day. My whole family celebrates her life.

Every year when we celebrate the feast of Passover and remember

how our hero Moses helped the Jewish people escape the slavery of

Egypt, we also remember how my hero Irena Sendler helped the Jewish

children escape the slavery of the Nazis.

Little Irena Sendler, my hero. May she rest in peace.

Author’s Notes

To learn more about Irena Sendler, visit the following websites.

www.irenasendler.org

http://www1.yadvashem.org/righteous_new/sendlerova.html

All the quotes are Irena’s words, taken from books and websites.

Irena was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, but lost to Al Gore.

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Pictures taken without permission from internet.

Sorry.

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