Irena Sendler

Irena Sendler (15 February 1910 – 12 May 2008) was a Polish nurse and social worker who served in the Polish Underground in German-occupied Warsaw during World War II, and was head of the children’s section of Żegota the Polish Council to Aid Jews, which was active from 1942 to 1945.

Assisted by some two dozen other Żegota members, Sendler smuggled approximately 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto and then provided them with false identity documents and shelter outside the Ghetto, saving those children from the Holocaust.

The German occupiers eventually discovered her activities – she was arrested by the Gestapo, tortured and sentenced to death, but managed to evade execution and survive the war. In 1965, Sendler was recognised by the State of Israel as Righteous among the Nations. Late in life she was awarded the Order of the White Eagle (Poland’s highest honour) for her wartime humanitarian efforts.

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Some of you picked up that she had received honors. All of you responded that you trusted her and that she may have used her charm to manipulate people. Indeed she did! Some of you intuited that she lived in the 60s European.

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