Irena Sendler

Rescuer and Resister

 

Hello, my name is Maddie Reuss.  When my English IV Honors class was proposed the idea of doing our community outreach project individually instead of as a whole class as in past years, I, as well as my class, had mixed feelings about knowing how to begin. Before even discussing what we were going to do, I told Mrs. Kollbaum the idea of doing a radio interview.  After researching Irena Sendler, I finalized my idea to continue with the radio interview.  My research on Irena Sendler truly inspired me.  Irena was a great, strong, inspiring woman.  I hope that the radio interview on here inspires one of the listeners to go out and continue telling Irena’s story.  

 

Radio Interview:

 

 

 

 

Radio Transcript:

 

Dr. Kent M. Keith once wrote:

“People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.  Love them anyway.  If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.  Do good anyway.  If you are successful, you win false friends and true enemies.  Succeed anyway.  The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.  Do good anyway. Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.  Be honest and frank anyway.  The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.  Think big anyway. People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs. Fight for a few underdogs anyway.  What you spend years uilding may be destroyed overnight.  Build anyway. People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.  Help people anyway.  Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you have anyway.”

 

Irena Sendler did the unthinkable anyway.  Small from the beginning, Irena Sendler stood at 4 feet 11 inches taking on one of the toughest challenges one could face in life:  smuggling children away from the terrible happenings during the Holocaust.  Growing up in a loving family, Irena was taught at a young age to help others.  Her father in particular, a doctor, treated patients, mostly Jews, for the terrible disease of typhus.  Because of his courageous act and dying from the disease himself, the Jewish leaders in their community offered to help pay for Irena Sendler’s education.  Irena was surrounded in a Jewish community and taught to help others without concern of what race or religion they were.

 

While continuing her studies at Warsaw University, Irena protested against the “ghetto-bench system” which is segregation between Jews and everyone else. Because of her protest, Irena Sendler was suspended from the university for three years.  In 1939, at the age of 29, Irena Sendler started to help the Jews from the invasion of Germans in Warsaw.  She fed them, housed them, and supported them.  Once the Warsaw Ghetto was formed, she was unable to continue helping for a while until she began to smuggle children out of the ghetto and save them.  Irena was not alone in her efforts.  She had many secret helpers.  Irena and her helpers started making false documents for all of the children saved.  Because Irena Sendler was in charge of the “Children’s Division of Zegota,” which was an underground group dedicated to assisting Jewish people, she had the access and power to be able to riskily and successfully save over 2,500 children.

 

Irena resembled your favorite doll more than a tough, determined, resistance leader.  How was it possible for a small woman like her to save over 2,500 children?  She had 5 main means of escape:

 

• by ambulance under a stretcher

• through a nearby courthouse

• sewer pipes and underground passages

• trolleys by sacks, trunks, or suitcases

• or pretend to be sick or actually sick and legally be moved by ambulance

 

As Irena Sendler started taking more children away from families, she made a promise to herself and the families that the children would be returned to their Jewish relatives after the war.  Mrs. Stahl, the Vice President of The Jewish Foundation for the Righteous quoted Irena saying, “Here I am, a stranger, asking them to place their child in my care.  They ask if I can guarantee their safety.  I have to answer no. Sometimes they would give me their child.  Other times they would say come back.  I would come back a few days later and the family had already been deported.” Almost all the parents of the children saved were killed in the Treblinka death camp.

 

On October 20, 1943, German soldiers caught wind of what Irena was doing.  They arrested her, beat her, and broke her legs and feet.  When she went into questioning, she told the lie that her and her helpers made up.  She was sentenced to death.  One of the members of the “Children’s Division of Zegota” found out what was happening to Irena and bribed the soldiers to fake her execution and smuggle her into hiding.  Irena Sendler went into hiding until the end of the war.

 

After the war, Irena dug up the jar of false documents of the children she saved and went out on a search for all of the children to be placed back with surviving family members.  By the time she found the children, they were already placed in orphanages.  Irena continued her life with a family.  She had two children: a son, Adam who passed away in 1999, and a daughter, Janka who still lives in Warsaw, Poland today.  Irena lived in Warsaw, Poland the rest of her life until she passed away on May 12, 2008.  Irena once said in an interview, “Every child saved with my help and the help of all the wonderful secret messengers, who today are no longer living, is the justification of my existence on this earth, and not a title to glory.”

 

Irena Sendler’s story is one that was lost for many years until a group of students from Kansas were challenged with a year-long history project to reach out to the community.  They heard about Irena’s heroic deeds and thought it was a mistake since no one has really ever heard about her.  After some research and dedication, they became more and more involved with her story and created a website and performance called Life in a Jar.  Life in a Jar tells Irena’s story through a stage performance.  They have performed over 345 times in North America and in Europe.  While telling her story, they set out a jar to collect donations to go towards the continuation of telling Irena Sendler’s story and to donate funds towards a further study of the Holocaust all around the world.

 

One of the children saved, Elzbieta Ficowska, said, “Mrs. Sendler saved not only us, but also our children and grandchildren and the generations to come.”

 

I am telling this story not because I have to but because I want to.  Once I heard Irena Sendler’s story, I was inspired.  So many questions roam around through my head while studying the Holocaust:  “What if that was me? What would I have done? How would I react? Would I be brave? Would I have been a person who tried to help?”  What I have taken away from my study is that anyone of any race, religion, or size can do something small or large to make this world a better place.  I encourage you, the listener, to come away from hearing Irena Sendler’s story and to tell it to another person.  I encourage you to try and eliminate hate from your life.  One spark starts a fire.  By saving one life, you can save the world.