Worth Books - Summary and Analysis of Irenas Children: The Extraordinary Story of the Woman Who Saved 2,500 Children from the Warsaw Ghetto: Based on the Book by Tilar J. Mazzeo

Summary and Analysis of

Irenas Children

The Extraordinary Story of the Woman Who Saved 2,500 Children from the Warsaw Ghetto

Based on the Book by Tilar J. Mazzeo

Contents

Context

Irena Sendler was a Polish Catholic woman who grew up during the preWorld War II era of segregation, a time when Jews and non-Jews did not socialize, marry, or mix in any way due to the rampant anti-Semitism of the time. When the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, Irena, by then a social worker with friends from all social classes and backgrounds, already had a history of standing up for Jews.

The backdrop of her life was a battle between Polish nationalists who wanted a free Poland and the Nazis who occupied and ruled the country. Shortly after invading Poland, the German army annexed a huge part of the city of Warsaw and ordered over 400,000 Jews to move there, creating the Warsaw ghetto. The area, which spanned 840 acres, was closed off from the rest of the city, surrounded by walls lined with barbed wire. The Jews residing there were given food rations consisting of a mere 180 calories a day per person as a systematic attempt by the Nazis to starve them to death.

Many in the Jewish quarter, as the ghetto was also called, attempted to escape to what was known as the Aryan side of the city where they hoped to live in freedom and safety. They used sewage tunnels and tunnels dug by the Jewish residents, and false identification papers and fake birth certificates that declared them Christian. Some were aided by one of the hundreds of resistance groups, including the Home Army that fought for Polands freedom from its occupiers, and egota, a secret group that ferried those in the ghetto out to freedom.

Irena was part of a network that worked to save Jewish ghetto dwellers and she soon became one of its leaders. This network was made up primarily of social workers, like herself, as well as doctors, lawyers, nurses, and other civil servants. Irena and her group of about twenty fellow government employees and civilians are credited with saving the lives of over 2,500 children at great risk to their own personal safety. The penalty for saving a Jew was execution for both the Jewish person and the rescuer.

Irenas story remained buried for decades, as was the case of many of those she worked with, due to the Russian liberation of Poland that imposed communism on the population. Since Irena had worked with the nationalist Home Army and egota, she was considered a subversive by the Soviets and even imprisoned under Soviet Union rule. It was only by chance that she emerged a hero in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when a group of American teens discovered her history by chance while working on a class assignment. The students wrote an award-winning play, Life in a Jar , which brought Irena Sendler worldwide recognition six decades after she and others risked so much to save Warsaws Jewish children.

Overview

Irena Sendler has been called the female OskarSchindler, because like Schindler, she was a Christian who risked her life to saveJews during World War II. More than 2,500 Jewish children living in the Warsawghetto were able to escape, thanks to the efforts of Irena and her resistancenetwork.

Irena was a young Catholic social worker who, prior to Nazi occupation, already had a history of standing up to the anti-Semitism of prewar Poland, thanks largely to witnessing her fathers compassion and willingness as a doctor to treat Jews when she was a child. She also grew up around a Jewish community, which included Jewish playmates, and later when attending university, she had a large group of Jewish friends, including Adam Celnikier who later became her lover and fellow resistance fighter.

When the Germans invaded Poland in 1939, they forced more than 400,000Warsaw Jews to move to a segregated part of the city surrounded by brick walls. Thisannexation of the Jewish community was part of the Nazis final solution to ridthe world of Jews through starvation and brutal slave labor. This annihilation planeventually progressed to massive deportations to Nazi death camps, random shootingson the street, especially after curfew, and eventually the total destruction of theJewish ghetto.

Sendler and her network used their connections in the social work department, hospitals, orphanages, convents, and courts to procure and smuggle medicine, food, money, and forged passports and birth certificates into the ghetto at great personal risk, since helping a Jew was punishable by death. Many parents desperately, but willingly, gave up their children to Irena and her cohorts, in hopes their children would survive. This meant name changes as well as the loss of their Jewish identity. Irena promised these parents she would keep a careful record of their original names and their new ones, and who their parents were, so that after the warshould the parents survivethe family could be reunited. And if they didnt live, the children would know what their real names were and who their parents had been, since many were babies or very young when they were entrusted to Irenas care.

Some Jews were upset about their children being christened asCatholics, but most realized it was the price to pay to stay alive. The lists Irenamade were a possible death sentence for her and all involved, as they were evidenceof her work rescuing Jews, but she kept meticulous records on thin tissue cigarettepapers anyway, and eventually put them in glass jars and buried them in a friendsbackyard.

Sendlers network included close and trusted friends, as well as resistance groups such as the Home Army, whose goal was independence and freedom for Poland, and the underground organization egota, which united hundreds of groups working secretly to save the Jewish people in Poland. Irena was ultimately arrested, the result of being given up by a fellow conspirator under torture, and she was beaten and tortured, and her legs, feet, and arms were broken. She narrowly missed a scheduled execution when the egota bribed a prison guard who allowed her to escape. She spent the remainder of the war in hiding, but she still worked tirelessly behind the scenes to ensure that others would live.

After the war, Irenas bravery and heroic deeds were lost to history. Poland fell under the Soviet Unions communist rule, and Sendler was considered a traitor due to her ties to the Home Army, which advocated Polish independence. It was only when some of her survivors immigrated to Israel that her story could be made public. In 1965 Yad Vashem, Israels official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, awarded her a place on the list of Righteous Among the Nations, an honor that recognizes non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. Unfortunately, the Soviets did not allow her to travel to receive it.

Finally, in 1999, American teens in Kansas discovered Irena Sendler when doing a classroom assignment. The students and their teacher thought the 2,500 number given for Jewish children saved by Irena and her colleagues must have been a typo, until they started digging and discovered the figure was correct. The female students wrote a play, Life in a Jar , the title inspired by Irenas method of preserving the lists of the children she rescued. The play won awards and brought the history of Irena and her children to light.

Irena eventually visited Israel when she was in her seventies and had emotional reunions with some of the childrennow adultsshe had saved. She was made an honorary citizen of Israel in 1991, and in 2003, was awarded Polands highest honor, The Order of the White Eagle. She was never comfortable with the accolades hurled at her, crediting instead the many people working in the underground who helped to make saving Jews possible. She died in Warsaw, Poland, in 2008 at age 98. Every November 1, the Day of the Dead, also known as All Saints Day, flowers and candles are placed on her grave to commemorate the woman who has become a Polish hero.