Once outside the walls, the Jewish children were given new identities and placed in convents, orphanages, parishes and with Polish families. Sendler provided them with forged documents and even managed to divert some German occupation funds for the support of the youngsters in hiding.But she did not want to rob the kids of their true identities, so she wrote their true names and their aliases in thin strips of tissue paper which were buried in sealed glass jars in the garden of one of her fellow-conspirators. After the war was over, she hoped they could be reunited with their surviving relatives.
In 1942 she joined Żegota, the London-based Polish Government-in-Exile’s organization set up for the express purpose of saving Polish Jews. It was the only such government-run organization in Nazi-occupied Europe. But the following year, Irena Sendler was finally found out, arrested, tortured by the Gestapo at Pawiak Prison and sentenced to death. Under torture by the Gestapo, a woman laundry owner blew the whistle on her. In the nick of time, Żegota contacts managed to bribe a Nazi guard who turned a blind eye to her escape.
Irena Sendler, who had sympathized with the socialist movement’s anti-communist wing, did not have an easy time of it after post-war Poland’s communist take-over. She worked in the social-welfare department with fallen and troubled women and continued to help some of the youngsters she had saved. But the recognition she so richly deserved was conspicuously withheld. It wasn’t until two decades after the war that Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Institute awarded Sendler a medal as a “Righteous Gentile” who risked her life to save Jews.
That little-known incident might have faded into oblivion were it not far a chance occurrence in 1999 half a world away. Uniontown, Kansas high-school teacher Norman Conrad showed three of his girl students a short mention about Irena Sendler from a 1994 “U.S. News and World Report” story entitled “The Other Schindlers”, suggesting they research it as part of a National History Day project. At the time they assumed Sendler must have died and were pleasantly surprised to learn she was living with relatives in a cramped Warsaw apartment.
Eventually the three teenagers, joined by other students, produced a play based on Sendler’s experiences entitled “Life in a Jar” – an allusion to the lists of names she had stashed away and buried for safe-keeping. In 2001, the Kansas high-schoolers paid their first of several visits to Irena in Warsaw. The visit was written up by the Polish and foreign press, and almost overnight Sendler became a national hero.
She was honored with Poland’s Commodore’s Cross of Polonia Restituta and the country’s highest decoration, the Order of the White Eagle. She also became Poland’s nominee for a Nobel Peace Prize. She especially cherished a congratulatory letter she received form Polish.-born Pope john Paul II. During the final years of her life, Irena Sendler was bombarded with interview requests. Articles and books have been written about her, and a long interview was taped for a documentary on her war-time activities. And almost down to the very end, she remained alert and had a fantastic memory for names, dates and events.
But she resented being compared to Schindler, the Nazi industrialist who was turned into a mega-hero by Steven Spielberg’s movie “Schindler’s List”. Unlike Sendler, Schindler was never at risk and saved some 1,500 Jews because he did not want his factory to lose highly trained employees who could not be easily replace in wartime.
Perhaps the time has come to share the courage, dedication and sacrifice of a true Polish Catholic humanitarian with the world at large. “Sendler’s Lists” would certainly make an excellent theme for the next Spielberg movie. Poland’s Oscar-winning film director Andrzej Wajda would also surely be able to do justice to the efforts of his country’s long-unsung heroine. Irena Krzyżanowska-Sendler deserves at least that much.
