The Fifth Anniversary of the Passing of Irena Sendler
Between 1939 and 1942, working for Warsaw’s Municipal Social Welfare Department, she organised a network of twenty social workers who led Jewish children out of the ghetto and placed them, on the “Aryan side”, with families, orphanages and convents. Irena Sendler wrote details of the true identity of each child on a thin card which she then placed in a jar and buried in the ground so that, after the War, each child could be returned to its true identity. From 1942, she chaired the Children’s Department of Żegota, the Council to Aid Jews.
Regarding the help she extended to children, Sendler said, “Everything had to be carried out subtly and carefully, because the children were terrified, frightened and greatly missed their mothers, fathers, grandmothers and their whole families. We had to constantly repeat to them, ‘You’re not Rachel. You are Zosia. Your name is now different to what it has been until now’. For us, it was a difficult transition. For the children, it was simply shocking.”
Those who knew her describe her as modest, smiling and constantly stressing that, alone, she never would have been able to save anyone.
