As part of our blog series about women medical pioneers, meet Irena Sendler, the Polish nurse who rescued 2,500 Jewish children from a concentration camp.
Role Models
Irena was born in Poland in February 1910. Her father, Stanislaw Kryzanowski was a doctor who cared for his patients regardless of their race or social status. He often treated the poorest for free. Her mother was Janina Karolina.
Both taught her “that a person in need should be helped from the heart, without regard to their religion or nationality.” She was an only child and, unusually for Polish Catholic families at the time, was allowed to play freely with the Jewish children in her neighbourhood.
In 1917, Irena’s father died of typhus after contracting the disease from a Jewish patient whom his colleagues refused to treat.
Irena studied Law and Polish Literature at the University of Warsaw. She developed strong Socialist views and decided to pursue a career as a social care nurse at the Warsaw Department of Social Welfare.
Her role involved providing food, clothing and medicine for orphans, the elderly, and the poor. Most of her clients were underprivileged women and children.
Under Nazi Rule
When Nazi troops invaded Poland in 1939, they created a ghetto of around 4km2 in Warsaw city centre where they detained 400,000 Jews. The densely populated, unsanitary conditions were a perfect breeding ground for infectious diseases. Thousands died every day of hunger and illness.
Fearful of a typhus epidemic, the Germans allowed Polish nurses to control the compound. Irena was issued with a special permit which allowed her to enter the ghetto to check for signs of typhus. She obtained passes for some of her colleagues and together they did what they could to ease suffering by smuggling medication, soap, food, and clothing inside.
However, after a brief period it became abundantly clear to Irena that the inevitable outcome for the prisoners in the concentration camp was death. She determined to save as many as she could.
Resistance
Irena joined the underground Polish resistance organisation, Zegota, which was created to aid the Jewish population. She promised families inside the Ghetto that she would rescue their children so that they would not die there.
Desperately, she and her co-workers began their secret mission to free hundreds of babies and children. They transported some in an ambulance with a false bottom that was authorised to take the most severely infected with typhus to hospitals.
They also used lorries, baskets, potato sacks, trash bags, toolboxes, and coffins. The youngest babies were given sedatives so that they would not cry out and be discovered. Irena told the Germans that the missing people had died of typhus.
One of the rescued babies was 5-month-old Elzbieta Ficowska, who later expressed her eternal gratitude to Irena Sendler for saving her life and founded the “Association of the Children of the Holocaust.”
Once outside the Ghetto, the children were given Christian names and taught Christian prayers in case they were tested by the Nazis. They were adopted by Polish families or homed in convents or orphanages.
Irena meticulously recorded all their details including their Jewish names, Christian names, and new locations on slips of paper. She hoped that they would one day be reunited with their families. The papers were placed inside two large jam jars and buried under an apple tree in Irena’s neighbour’s garden.
Capture and Escape
After rescuing 2500 children, Irena was caught and interrogated by the Nazis. Despite being tortured, imprisoned, and sentenced to death she never revealed the whereabouts of the children’s information.
On the day of Irena’s execution, one of the German Guards took her away for further questioning. Once they were alone, he shouted “run” in Polish. Irena ran faster than she had ever run in her life and was miraculously freed from her death sentence. Zegota had managed to bribe the guards. She spent the rest of the war in hiding.
After Poland’s liberation in 1945, Irena Sendler co-founded an orphanage, a care home for the elderly, and a service for women and children in need.
She also unearthed the jam jars and gave the lists to Dr Adolfo Berman, president of the “Committee to Rescue Surviving Jews.”
An Accomplished Life
In honour of her bravery, Irena Sendler was awarded the title of “Righteous Among the Nations,” “Honorary Citizen of Israel,” and “Lady of the Order of the White Eagle.” She was also nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
However, Irena remained modest about her accomplishments until the very end of her life.
” What I did was not an extraordinary thing. It was normal… each child saved with my help and that of my collaborators is the justification of my existence and not a title for glory… we are not a species of heroes. On the contrary, I still have pangs of conscience for having done too little.”
She died at the age of 98 years on 12th May 2008. Fittingly, 12th May is the date on which the world celebrates International Nurses Day, it being also the anniversary of the birth of Florence Nightingale.
