100th Anniversary of Irena Sendler’s Birth

EO, 16 November 2016
February 15, 2010, marks the 100th anniversary of Irena Sendler's birth. She was a prominent holder of the title Righteous among the Nations and an honorary citizen of the City of Warsaw. During the Second World War she helped save 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto.


The Museum of the History of Polish Jews, in cooperation with 2B Productions, began commemorations of this occasion with an event in the Kamienica Theatre in Warsaw’s Wola district, one of the few remaining buildings of the former ghetto. The memory of Irena Sendler was honored with a screening of the film “In the Name of Their Mothers”, which documents the heroic activities of Irena Sendler herself as well as the women working with her. The director of the film, Mary Skinner, was able to find Holocaust survivors living in the United States. She returns to Poland with one of them, William Donat, and was able to arrange a meeting with the woman who some decades ago saved his life.

Recipients of the title Righteous among the Nations from Warsaw and the surrounding areas were special guests at the ceremonies. President Lech Kaczyński and the Mayor of Warsaw, Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz, are honorary patrons of the event.