How one person saved over 2,000 children from the Nazis - Iseult Gillespie
In Warsaw, late October 1943,
Irena Sendler and Janina Grabowska
were enjoying a rare moment of peace
in their war-torn city.
But their laughter froze when they heard
the Gestapo pounding on Sendler’s door.
Sendler rushed to the window to dispose
of incriminating evidence—
only to see more police patrolling below.
Knowing she was minutes from arrest,
she tossed Janina
her most dangerous possession:
a glass jar containing the names
of over 2,000 Jewish children
she’d smuggled to safety.
This arrest wasn’t the first consequence
Sendler had faced
in her lifelong crusade
against anti-Semitism.
Born to Catholic parents in 1910,
she grew up in a predominantly Jewish town
where her father treated poor Jewish
patients other doctors refused to help.
Irena was furious at the constant
discrimination against her Jewish friends.
As a graduate student in social welfare
at the University of Warsaw,
Sendler publicly denounced
the segregation of classrooms
and defaced her non-Jewish identity card—
earning her a suspension and a reputation
for troublemaking.
Buoyed by her socialist ideals
and inspired by her fellow social workers,
Sendler assisted vulnerable Jewish
families across Warsaw,
pushing back on the waves of anti-Semitism
surging through Europe.
But in September 1939,
Nazi Germany invaded Poland,
bringing laws that further
eroded Jewish rights.
In 1940, Hitler announced that hundreds
of thousands of Jews in Warsaw
were to be forced into just
over one square mile of land.
Bordered by high walls and subject
to constant surveillance,
families living in the Warsaw Ghetto
quickly became starving and sick.
Appalled, Sendler and her colleagues
secured passes to the ghetto
on the pretense of checking
for typhus outbreaks.
At first, her group worked
to smuggle in resources
with the help of sympathetic Polish
officials and the medical underground.
But as desperate parents began sending
their children through sewers
and over walls,
it became clear that
to help these people survive,
Sendler needed to help them escape.
Sendler and her associates developed
a coordinated campaign of rescue missions.
Children were bundled into dirty laundry,
packed into boxes on cargo trains,
and carried beneath the Gestapo’s noses
in coffins, toolboxes, and briefcases.
Bigger children escaped
through the courthouse and church,
which straddled the ghetto’s boundaries.
Sendler helped ferry these children
to safe houses,
before forging them new documents
and sending them to orphanages,
convents, and foster families
across Poland.
To retain their Jewish identities
and keep track of every child,
Sendler kept painstaking records
on thin cigarette paper
and stored them in glass jars.
This work was punishable by death.
But for Sendler, such consequences
paled in comparison
to the pain of convincing parents
to part with their children—
often with no promise of a reunion.
In 1942, the Nazis began transporting
Jews from the ghetto
into concentration camps.
Sendler worked with new urgency,
joining forces with the Nazi
resistance group called Zegota.
Zegota helped Sendler expand her
operation by stashing money for her
in post boxes across Warsaw.
But this system would also be
Sendler’s downfall.
When the Gestapo threatened a laundry
owner whose business
contained a Zegota post box,
she gave them Sendler’s name.
At 3am on October 20th, the
Gestapo burst into Sendler’s apartment,
arresting her for aiding Jews
throughout the country.
The police had captured Sendler,
but her records remained safe.
Janina protected the children’s names
with her life,
all without knowing whether
her friend would ever return.
Despite enduring months of physical
and psychological torture,
Sendler betrayed no information.
Defiant to the end, she was sentenced
to execution on January 20th, 1944.
But as she walked to her death,
a German officer diverted her course.
Zegota had paid the Gestapo
the modern equivalent of over $100,000
for Sendler’s release.
That night as she listened to bullhorns
proclaiming her death,
Sendler’s work began anew.
Remaining in hiding, she continued
to oversee Zegota’s rescue missions
until Germany’s defeat in 1945.
After the war, Sendler reconnected
with the children she’d helped escape,
remaining in contact with many
for the rest of her life.
And while the new Polish government
sought to suppress her story,
the children she rescued ensured
she was recognized for her work.
Yet despite all the lives she saved,
Sendler remained hesitant to accept
praise for her actions, remarking,
“I continue to have qualms of conscience
that I did so little.”
