For five years during WWII, a group of young Polish women -- some barely out of their teens – outfoxed the Nazis and saved the lives of thousands of Jewish children from the Warsaw ghetto.
After the war, the heroine of this story, Irena Sendler, kept silent about her wartime work. Now, in the last long interviews she gave before she died at the age of 98, she reveals the truth about a daring conspiracy of women in occupied Poland.
Irena Sendler was a 29-year-old social worker when the Nazis invaded Poland. When the city’s Jews were imprisoned inside the Warsaw ghetto without food and medicine, Sendler and her friends smuggled in aid and began smuggling orphaned children out – hiding them in convents, orphanages and private homes. By 1943, Sendler and her friends had begun to appeal to Jewish mothers to part with their children in order to save them. Before the Nazis burned the entire district to the ground, they managed to rescue over 2,500 children. Over the next two years, they cared for them, disguised their identities and moved them constantly, to keep them from being discovered and killed. They joined forces with the Polish Resistance to get money to fund and protect the children’s caretakers and they preserved the true identities of the children, hoping to re-unite them with their Jewish families after the war.
In October of 1943, Irena Sendler was captured by the Gestapo, imprisoned and tortured. When she refused to divulge anything about her co-workers or her organization, she was sentenced to death. She escaped on the day she was to be executed, when the Polish Resistance bribed a German guard. With a new false identity, she continued with her work until the end of the war.
All of the 2,500 children who had been rescued by Sendler’s network survived the war, and many were re-united with their families.
After the war, Communist authorities who took over in Poland silenced Irena Sendler and her liaisons, because of their connection to the Polish Resistance. Many of the women endured Soviet prisons or were forced into exile.
Today their stories – long kept quiet by the Communist regime in Poland – can finally be told.
After the war, the heroine of this story, Irena Sendler, kept silent about her wartime work. Now, in the last long interviews she gave before she died at the age of 98, she reveals the truth about a daring conspiracy of women in occupied Poland.
Irena Sendler was a 29-year-old social worker when the Nazis invaded Poland. When the city’s Jews were imprisoned inside the Warsaw ghetto without food and medicine, Sendler and her friends smuggled in aid and began smuggling orphaned children out – hiding them in convents, orphanages and private homes. By 1943, Sendler and her friends had begun to appeal to Jewish mothers to part with their children in order to save them. Before the Nazis burned the entire district to the ground, they managed to rescue over 2,500 children. Over the next two years, they cared for them, disguised their identities and moved them constantly, to keep them from being discovered and killed. They joined forces with the Polish Resistance to get money to fund and protect the children’s caretakers and they preserved the true identities of the children, hoping to re-unite them with their Jewish families after the war.
In October of 1943, Irena Sendler was captured by the Gestapo, imprisoned and tortured. When she refused to divulge anything about her co-workers or her organization, she was sentenced to death. She escaped on the day she was to be executed, when the Polish Resistance bribed a German guard. With a new false identity, she continued with her work until the end of the war.
All of the 2,500 children who had been rescued by Sendler’s network survived the war, and many were re-united with their families.
After the war, Communist authorities who took over in Poland silenced Irena Sendler and her liaisons, because of their connection to the Polish Resistance. Many of the women endured Soviet prisons or were forced into exile.
Today their stories – long kept quiet by the Communist regime in Poland – can finally be told.