Irena Sendler Biography

Irena Sendler was a Polish woman who along with her trusted network is credited to have saved the lives of 2,500 Jewish children during the Holocaust. Working as a nurse and a social worker, she was active in the ‘Polish Underground’—the Polish resistance movement in World War II—in German-occupied Warsaw during the World War II. As a young woman she was deeply influenced by her father who was a doctor and also one of the first Polish Socialists. She grew up watching her father tend to the poor patients and this instilled in her a desire to help the needy and the underprivileged in whatever ways she could. When the Germans invaded Warsaw in 1939 and started inflicting unspeakable tortures on the Jewish population, she made it her priority to help out the Jews by offering them food and shelter. She collaborated with some of her trusted allies and used her position to obtain thousands of false documents to help the Jewish families. As a nurse and a social worker, Irena was in charge of the Children’s Division of Zegota, a Polish underground group to assist Jewish people. In this position, she worked tirelessly with her helpers to smuggle around 2,500 children out of the Warsaw Ghetto and provided them safe shelter outside the ghetto