Irena Sendler The Courageous heart of

Irena Sendler was born as Irena Krzyżanowska on February 15 th, 1910 in Otwock. Her father, who was a physician, died in February 1917 from typhus contracted while treating patients. After his death, Jewish community leaders offered to help her mother pay for Sendler's education, though her mother declined their help. She opposed the ghetto-bench system that existed at some pre-war Polish universities and defaced her grade card. As a result of this public protest, she was suspended from the University of Warsaw for three years. Childhood

Since October 1941 she worked for Municipal Social Welfare Department. She began aiding Jews soon after the German invasion in 1939 by leading a group of co-workers who created more than 3,000 false documents to help Jewish families.

In August 1943 the underground organization, also known as the Council to Aid Jews, asked Irena to lead its Jewish children's section. She was by then known by her war name Jolata. A war name would be adopted by each new recruit as he/ she enlisted in the French army. It was a matter of security by members of the French resistance and Polish resistance during World War ll

Under the pretext of conducting inspections of sanitary conditions within the Ghetto, Sendler and her co- workers smuggled out babies and small children, sometimes in ambulances and trams, sometimes hiding them in packages and suitcases, and using various other means.

About 400 of the children were directly smuggled out by Sendler herself. She and her co-workers buried lists of the hidden children in jars in order to keep track of their original and new identities. The aim was to return the children to their original families when the war was over. She placed the Jewish children with Polish families, the Warsaw orphanage of the Sisters of the Family of Mary, or Roman Catholic convents such as the Little Sister Servants of the Blessed Virgin Mary Conceived Immaculate.

In 1943 Sendler was arrested by the Gestapo and severely tortured. The Gestapo beat her brutally, fracturing her feet and legs in the process. Despite this, she refused to betray any of her comrades or the children they rescued, and was sentenced to death by firing squad. Żegota saved her life by bribing the guards on the way to her execution. After her escape, she hid from the Germans, but returned to Warsaw under a fake name and continued her involvement with the Żegota. During the Warsaw Uprising, she worked as a nurse in a public hospital, where she hid five Jews. She continued to work as a nurse until the Germans left Warsaw, retreating before the advancing Soviet troops.

During the remaining years of the war, she lived hidden, just like the children she rescued. Irena was the only one who knew where the children were to be found. When the war was finally over, she dug up the bottles and began the job of finding the children and trying to find a living parent. However, almost all of the children's parents had been killed at the Treblinka extermination camp or had gone missing.

Irena Sendler lived in Warsaw for the remainder of her life. She died on 12 May 2008, aged 98, and is buried in Warsaw's Powazki Cemetery.

JULIETA DIAB 6 DISEÑO 2015 TEACHER: Cynthia Mauas