Irina sandler during the second world war. The Mother of the Children of the Holocaust: The Story of Irina Sendler
Irena Sendler (in Polish Sendlerova) saved the lives of 2,500 children from the Warsaw ghetto during the war. The children were between six months and 15 years old. Little children were given sleeping pills and taken out in a truck in boxes with holes for air passage. The older children were hid in a sack and taken out in the same truck. It was not easy to persuade mothers to give up their children in the name of their salvation. Children were housed in monasteries and Polish families. Sheltering Jewish children was very dangerous - more than 2,000 Poles were executed for their mercy by the Nazis. Irena kept a card index - on thin sheets of paper she wrote down the names of children, their parents and close relatives, as well as new, Polish names that were given to children for their salvation and the addresses of Polish families who gave shelter for these children... All this data was placed in glass jars and buried in the garden of a friend of Irena Sendler's. After the war, the recordings were handed over to the chairman of the Central Committee of Jews in Poland. Irena's information helped to track down the children from the ghetto and find their relatives. But most of the children were left orphans and were taken to Israel, to orphanages.
Irena Sendler in 1942.
Warsaw ghetto.
In 1940, the Nazis organized a ghetto in part of the territory of Warsaw, which historically had a high percentage of the Jewish population. 113 thousand Poles were evicted from there, and 138 thousand Jews were settled in their place. By the end of the year, 440 thousand people (37% of the city's population) lived in the ghetto on an area of 4.5%.
These people were sentenced to death by the maniac Hitler.
Food daily "norms" were calculated for the death of people from hunger and in 1941 amounted to 184 kcal (2 kg of bread per month) per person. People fell and died in the streets. But the Nazis were afraid of epidemics that could arise among weakened people and then spread throughout the occupied territory. This made it possible for the staff of the Warsaw Health Administration, among whom was Irena Sendler, to frequently visit the ghetto for sanitization.
The picture shows the Warsaw ghetto. May 1941.
Irena Sendlerova.
Irene aroused great confidence in the inhabitants of the ghetto, otherwise the mothers would not have entrusted their babies to this woman. This little woman had to be present at hundreds of personal tragedies, when mothers gave her their children, realizing that they would never see them again. Although, according to the recollections of Irena herself, there were times when her father agreed, but her mother was in no way ready to give up the most precious thing in the world. And tomorrow the whole family was sent to the Treblinka concentration camp for destruction.
Irena was born on February 15, 1910 in the family of a doctor. Her father, Stanislav Kzhizhanovsky, died in 1917, saving people with typhoid fever. Irena often recalled the words of her father, said to her shortly before her death: "If you see that someone is drowning, you need to throw yourself into the water to save, even if you cannot swim."
Young Irena.
Irena understood that you couldn't do much alone. According to her calculations, at least 12 people living outside the ghetto had to work to save one child: drivers, nurses, city officials and, finally, foster families. At first, the child had to somehow be taken out of the carefully guarded territory of the ghetto, then he had to make fake documents proving his identity, he needed ration cards and he had to find people willing to risk their lives and the lives of relatives and friends to save someone else's child.
Zhegota (Żegota) .
Irena was the soul and heart of her group. She turned out to be a talented organizer and performer. But without help " big world”She could not have saved so many children from certain death. In September 1942, the Provisional Committee for Aid to Jews was created in Poland, later, for conspiratorial purposes, it was renamed egota (the name taken from the work of Adam Mickiewicz). Zhegota was organized by two women: the writer Zofia Kossak-Shchutskaya and art critic Wanda Krakhelska-Filippovich. Interethnic relations in pre-war Poland were often tense. In the thirties, following the example of Nazi Germany, the rights of the Jewish population were significantly limited. For example, the universities had special benches at the end of lecture halls intended exclusively for Jews. By the way, Irena Sendlerova strongly protested against such discrimination and was suspended from her studies at the university for 3 years. Poles and Jews lived side by side, but professing different religions, having different cultures and mentality, they were wary and often hostile to each other. Nevertheless, the Polish intelligentsia and the Catholic Church, overcoming centuries of hostility, began to do everything in their power to save the Jews.
Zofia Kossak-Shchutskaya.
Wanda Krahelskaya-Filipovich.
Manifesto by Zofia Kossak-Shchutskaya.
“In the Warsaw ghetto, separated by a wall from the world, several hundred thousand death row prisoners are awaiting their death. They have no hope of salvation. Nobody comes to them with help. The number of Jews killed has exceeded a million, and this figure is increasing every day. Everyone perishes. Rich and poor, elders, women, men, youth, babies ... They are only guilty of being born Jews, condemned by Hitler to extermination. The world looks at these atrocities, the most terrible of all that history has known and is silent ... It is no longer possible to endure. The one who is silent before the fact of these murders becomes an accomplice of the murderers himself. He who does not condemn allows. Therefore, let's raise our voices, Poles-Catholics! Our feelings towards a Jew will not change. We still regard them as Poland's political, economic and ideological enemies. Moreover, we are aware that they hate us more than the Germans, blaming us for their misfortune. Why, on what basis - this remains a secret of the Jewish soul, it is confirmed by constant facts. Awareness of these feelings does not exempt us from the duty to condemn crimes ... In the stubborn silence of the international Jewish community, in the vomit of German propaganda, which seeks to throw the blame for the massacre of Jews on Lithuanians and Poles, we feel an act hostile to us ”
The child died right on the street.
Zegota's activities.
Irena Sendlerova had an underground pseudonym "Iolanta". Her group had to come up with more and more new ways to save the children. The kids were hidden in bags and trash bins (this is how Irena took out her six-month-old adopted daughter) and in bales with bloody bandages taken to the city dumps. The older children were taken out through the sewers. One rescued boy recalled how he had to, after turning the sentry around the corner, run headlong to the hatch, which opened from below and immediately closed over his head.
The unfortunate people were driven to destruction.
Zegota's hard work required considerable funds, including bribing Nazi officials and ransoming arrested underground fighters. The money came from the Delegation, the representative office of the Polish government in exile (the "London" government), from the Bund and from the Jewish National Committee. In total, Zhegote managed to save up to 60 thousand people, including at least 28 thousand in Warsaw. After the complete destruction of the ghetto, in May 1943, up to 4 thousand people were hiding in secret apartments in Warsaw at the same time.
The underground suffered heavy losses; about 700 egota members were shot. In 1943, Zofia Kossak-Shchutskaya was arrested and sent to Auschwitz, but she survived and even took part in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944.
Irena Sendler's arrest.
On October 20, 1943, Irena Sendler was arrested by anonymous denunciation. What does anonymous denunciation mean? The informer was not interested in the material reward for the extradition of the underground worker, which was quite tangible at that time of famine. This vile little soul needed only a result - to send a brave woman to death. Irena endured all the tortures - her arms and legs were broken, but she did not betray anyone. The Gestapo did not even imagine that this small woman (less than 1m 50cm tall) was a key link in the salvation of Jewish children. In the end, Irena, sentenced to death, was redeemed. The guard took her outside and said run. Members of Zhegota immediately grabbed Irena and took her to a safe house. The next day she found her last name in the list of Polish patriots who had been shot by the invaders.
Problems with the new authorities.
Irena Sendler, who worked underground exclusively to save children, did not take part in the civil war, but nevertheless, she, a pregnant woman, was actively interrogated by the special services, which ended in premature birth and the death of her little son who had not lived even two weeks. Sendler was in danger of being sentenced to death due to the fact that her activities were funded by the "London" government. When Irena's daughter grew up and wanted to go to college, she was not accepted because of Sendler's activities during the war.
In 1965, the Israeli National Holocaust and Heroism Memorial honored Irena Sendler with its highest honor - the title of Righteous Among the World and invited her to Israel. But the communist government did not let her out of the country. And in general, in Poland they learned about Irena's feat only in 2000, when 4 American schoolgirls who studied the life of Irena Sandler, at the suggestion of a history teacher, wrote a play about her - "Life in a Bank", and then, with the help of the international press, made it a feat known to the whole world.
The grown-up rescued children of Irena Sendler.
Irena became the national heroine of Poland. In 2003, she received the country's highest award - the Order of the White Eagle. In 2006, the President of Poland and the Prime Minister of Israel jointly submitted her candidacy for Nobel Prize the world. But the Nobel Committee made the shameful decision to award the prize to the Vice President of the United States A. Gore for a series of lectures on global warming, for which he received a lot of money. And the modest heroine huddled with her family in a one-room apartment. This is further evidence that big awards usually do not go to those who deserve them.
Still from the film.
In 2009 (a year after her death) the film “ brave Heart Irena Sendler ". It's worth seeing, although it takes a lot of nerves.
She was always smiling.
I have shared with you the information that I "dug up" and systematized. At the same time, he has not become poorer at all and is ready to share further, at least twice a week. If you find errors or inaccuracies in the article, please report. My e-mail address: [email protected] I'll be very thankful.
In the fall of 2008, the film “Braveheart of Irena Sendler” was shown in the USA. He talked about a woman who died quietly in May of the same year in Warsaw at the age of 99. Most of the viewers, while watching the picture, could not hold back their tears, so touching and tragic was the story of Irena Sendler.
Childhood
Irena Kshizhanovskaya was born into the family of a doctor who was in the teaching staff, who was in charge of the hospital and often provided medical care to poor Jews who could not afford to pay for treatment. Even before the birth of his daughter, he was an active participant in anti-government actions. When Irene was 7 years old, her father died of typhus, having become infected from patients. The Jewish community, which highly appreciated the merits of Dr. Kshizhanovsky, decided to help his family by offering to pay for Irena's education until she reaches 18 years of age. The girl's mother refused, because she knew how hard many of her husband's former patients live, but she told her daughter about it. So, gratitude and love settled forever in Irena's heart, which later gave life to thousands of children.
At the university, the girl joined the Polish Socialist Party, as she wanted to continue her father's work.
In 1932, Irena married Mieczyslaw Sendler, but the marriage did not last long, although they did not formalize the divorce.
Feat
When the Holocaust began in Poland, Irena Sendler was an employee of the Warsaw Health Department. Along with this, she was a member of the Polish underground organization "Zegota", which was involved in helping Jews.
By virtue of professional activity the young woman regularly visited the Warsaw ghetto and provided assistance to sick children. Using this cover, Irena Sendler and other members of Zhegota rescued 2,500 Jewish babies, who were then transferred to monasteries, private families and orphanages.
According to the recollections of the participants in those events, the babies were placed in boxes with holes, after having given them sleeping pills, and then taken away from the ghetto in cars that delivered disinfectants. As for the older children, they were carried out in sacks and baskets, taken out through the basements of houses and buildings adjacent to the area set aside for Jews.
Arrest
Irena Sendler also made sure that after the war the rescued children could find their parents. She wrote down their names on pieces of paper and put them in a glass jar, which she buried in her friend's garden.
In 1943, Irene Sendler was arrested on the basis of an anonymous denunciation. The young woman was tortured, trying to find out who of her entourage led the resistance movement or was simply a member of its underground organization. At the same time, Irene was shown a thick folder with denunciations and messages about her activities, signed by people she knew well. The goal of the Nazis was to find out the names of other participants in the rescue operations and the places where the children were hidden. Despite the beatings, fragile Irena did not betray her comrades-in-arms and did not tell the Gestapo where the lists with the names of the little Jews were, since in that case they would have been sent to and killed.
"Execution" and escape
Failing to achieve a result, the Nazis sentenced Irene to death. Fortunately, Sendler survived - the members of the anti-fascist resistance in Poland saved her by bribing the guards. Those, in turn, reported to the command that the execution had taken place, so Irene was not wanted.
According to the woman's recollections, before the execution she was summoned for the last interrogation. The soldier accompanying her did not bring Irene to the Gestapo building, but pushed her into the alley and ordered her to flee. There were Polish underground workers who took her to a safe place. In memory of her stay in Nazi torture chambers, Irene was left in ruined health, and she spent the end of her life in a wheelchair.
Completion of the mission
Irene Sendler had to go into hiding until the very end of the war. After the liberation of Poland, she was able to transfer the data on the saved children to Adolf Berman, who from 1947 to 1949 was the chairman of the Central Committee of the Jews of Poland. Thanks to a long search, it was possible to reunite the families who became victims of the Holocaust. As for the orphaned children, they were eventually transported to Israel after long ordeals.
Life in the postwar years
It would seem that with the advent of peace in Europe, the brave heart of Irena Sendler can calm down, and she will finally heal calm family life... However, fate decided to inflict one more blow on her: the state security organs of the People's Republic of Poland learned about her ties with the Regional Army and began to persecute her. In 1949, during a harsh interrogation, pregnant Irena gave birth to a child ahead of time, who died a few days later.
Belated recognition
Although over time, Irene Sendler was left alone by the Polish authorities, she felt the hostile attitude of the authorities towards her person until the fall of the communist regime. So, when in 1965 Israel "Yad Vashem" decided to award Irene Sendler the honorary title of Righteous Among the Nations, she was not allowed to visit the country in which the boys and girls who had once rescued her, who had already become adults and who considered her their second mother.
Only in 1983, the Polish authorities lifted the ban on her traveling abroad, and Irena Sendler was able to visit Israel, where she planted her tree on the memory lane.
And even after that, few people in the world knew that an old woman lived in a modest apartment in Warsaw, who had accomplished a feat that deserved all the highest awards and honors. However, fate willed that Irena Sendler lived to see the day when her story would be learned in different corners planets.
Moreover, everything happened by pure chance in 1999, and the initiators were again children - four schoolgirls from the American town of Uniontown. They were preparing a report for the History Day project, and the teacher showed them a five-year-old newspaper article under the headline "Another Schindler." The interested girls began to look for information about Irene Sendler and found that she was alive. With the help of relatives and teachers, they wrote the play "Life in the Bank", which was staged in various theaters in the USA, Canada, and later in Poland. The girls even came to Warsaw, where they saw their idol. Their friendship with Irene Sendler lasted for several years, during which they repeatedly visited Mother
Awards
The services of Irena Sendler were appreciated with a great delay by the Polish government, which in 2003 presented her with the Order of the White Eagle. Cavaliers of this highest award until Sendler became European monarchs, including Peter the Great, famous military leaders and the Pope. The order was restored in Poland only in 1992, and among those awarded over the past 24 years, hardly anyone was as worthy of it as Mrs. Sendler.
In addition, a year before the death of Irena, the Prime Minister of Israel proposed the Nobel Committee to award her the Peace Prize. The Sendler award did not take place, since the committee at that time did not begin to change the rules prescribing the awarding of awards for actions that were committed within the last two years.
As one of the Polish journalists wrote, "the prize was disgraced." Those who presented it, bypassed a man worthy of it like no other, to reward Al Gore, who presented a presentation on the problems of global warming.
And in 2007, Mrs. Irene was awarded the Order of the Smile medal. As always in Irena's life, the children intervened: she was presented as a candidate for the award by the boy Shimon Plocennik from Zelena Gora. The Order of the Smile was established in Poland in 1968 and is awarded to people who bring joy to children. In 1979, the award was given international status, and since then applicants for its receipt have been selected by a commission consisting of representatives of 24 countries.
Film "Braveheart of Irena Sendler"
The motion picture already mentioned was filmed in Latvia. When American journalists told Irene that they were going to make a film about her life during the war, she said that she agreed. At the same time, the woman asked that the picture be true and showed the Americans what that war really was, what the Warsaw ghetto looked like and what was happening there. The role of Irena Sendler in the film was played by New Zealand actress Anna Paquin, who in 1994 won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. According to viewers, the film turned out to be very poignant and truthful. Irena Sendler's daughter, Yanina, also liked the picture, who was initially against the idea of creating a cinematic version of her mother's biography.
Resistance movement in Poland
Talking about the feat of Sendler, it should be understood that a courageous woman could not act alone. According to the recollections of Mrs. Irena herself, in order to save one child, she needed the help of at least 12 people: drivers, medical workers, guards, shelter workers, officials writing forged documents, etc. The role of Polish nuns was quite special. It is known that 500 children rescued by Irene Sendler were able to survive only thanks to their help. At the same time, many sisters paid for their Christian humanism, manifested in relation to children of other faiths, with their lives and even became martyrs. So, in 1944, at the cemetery in Warsaw, the Nazis poured gasoline and burned alive a group of nuns who were helping Jews.
No less touching is the story of how Wojciech Zhukavsky and Alexander Zelverovich hid 40 children from the ghetto in the zoo, where they had to hide among the enclosures with animals.
Now you know who Irena Sendler was, a film about which you should definitely watch, especially since it is available in Russian translation.
Irena Sendler, or Irena Sendlerova (née Kshizhanovskaya), is a Polish Resistance activist who saved more than 2,500 children from the Warsaw ghetto during World War II. her life seems to be something unreal, which came to us from the pages of books or movie screens, but this brave woman really did what she did. Every time, taking out or taking a child out of the ghetto, she risked her own life and the lives of her loved ones, but still she never gave up, did not get scared, giving thousands of innocent children a ticket to life.
Irena was born on February 15, 1910 in Warsaw in the family of Stanislav Krzyzanowski (1877-1917) and Janina Karolina Grzybowska (1885-1944). Before the birth of his daughter, Stanislav took an active part in underground activities during the 1905 revolution, he was a member of the PPS (Polish Party of Socialists), by profession he was a doctor. Kshizhanovsky treated mostly poor Jews, whom other doctors simply refused to help. As a result, in 1917, he died of typhus, which he contracted from his patients. After his death, the Jewish community, which highly appreciated the merits of Dr. Kshizhanovsky, decided to help his family by offering to pay for Irena's education until she reaches 18 years of age. The girl's mother refused to take their money, as she understood how hard many of her husband's patients live, while she told this story to her daughter. Perhaps this is how gratitude and love for these people, who in the future gave life to thousands of children, settled in the girl's heart.
Irena Sendler
After graduating from school, Irena entered the University of Warsaw at the Department of Polish Literature. Then, while studying at the university, she joined the Polish Party of Socialists, as she wanted to continue her father's work. In pre-war Poland, prejudice against Jews was widespread, while many Poles did not support them and opposed racial prejudice. For example, during Irena's studies at Warsaw University, there were special “benches for Jews” in his lecture halls, they were installed for Jewish students, and they were in the last rows of university classrooms, they were also called “bench ghetto”. Very often Irena Sendler and her friends, who shared her views, defiantly sat down on these benches together with Jewish students. And after Polish nationalists beat up her Jewish friend Irena, she crossed out the seal on her student card and was suspended from school for 3 years. This was Irena Sendler before the start of World War II.
By the time the war began and the occupation of Poland by Nazi troops, Irena lived in Warsaw (before that she worked in city departments social protection Otwock and Tarchin). At the very beginning of the occupation, back in 1939, Irena Sendler began helping Jews. Together with the underground, she produced and distributed to the Jewish population about 3 thousand counterfeit Polish passports, which saved their owners first from falling into the ghetto, and then from death.
Until 1939, the Jewish quarter of Warsaw occupied about a fifth of the city; the townspeople themselves called it the northern region and the center of Jewish life in the pre-war capital of Poland, although Jews then lived in other parts of the city. After the occupation of Poland by the Nazis, they thought about creating a ghetto on the territory of Warsaw. Their plans began to come true in March 1940, when Governor General Hans Frank decided to create the Warsaw Ghetto. The Nazis organized it on the territory of the city, where historically a large percentage of the Jewish population lived. 113 thousand Poles were evicted from this area, and 138 thousand Jews were settled in their place. By the end of 1940, 440 thousand people already lived in the ghetto (approximately 37% of the total population of Warsaw), while the area of the ghetto was only 4.5% of the area of the entire city.
Children in the Warsaw ghetto
Living conditions in the ghetto were monstrous, there was a huge overcrowding of the population, and the norms for the distribution of food were tiny, they were designed to ensure that the inhabitants of the ghetto died of hunger. So in the second half of 1941, the food ration for Jews was only 184 kilocalories per day. But thanks to the illegally supplied food to the Warsaw ghetto, real consumption here averaged 1,125 kilocalories per day.
The mortality rate in the ghetto was quite high, while the Nazis were afraid of epidemics that could arise among the weakened Jewish residents, after which they could spread to other occupied territories. It was for this reason that at that time, Irena Sendler, an employee of the Warsaw Health Department, could visit the ghetto for sanitization and other measures aimed at preventing epidemics. In particular, she checked ghetto residents for signs of typhus; the Germans were very afraid of the spread of this disease.
In 1942, Irena began to cooperate with the Polish underground organization Zegota - the Council for Aid to Jews (her pseudonym in the organization is Iolanta). Visiting the ghetto, Sendler was literally torn to pieces in order to help as many people in need as possible. According to her, there was a real hell inside, hundreds of people in the ghetto died right on the streets, and the whole world silently watched it. Irena organized a whole system of assistance for the inhabitants of the Warsaw ghetto, using the money of the city administration and charitable Jewish organizations for this purpose. She brought food, coal, clothing, and also basic necessities into the ghetto. In the summer of 1942, when the deportation of Jews to death camps began in droves from the ghetto, she realized that it was time to act decisively, there was no more time to waste.
Irena on Christmas Eve 1944
By that time, the Polish underground organization Zhegota had organized a large-scale action to save Jewish children. Irena Sendler, who knew many people in the ghetto, became an important component of this action, ensuring its successful implementation. On the territory of the ghetto, Irena went to houses, barracks, basements and everywhere tried to find families with children. According to the heroine's recollections, the most difficult thing was to persuade the parents to give up their children. They asked Irene - can she guarantee their safety? And what she could guarantee them, only that, remaining in the ghetto, the children would face imminent death, and outside its walls they would have a chance of salvation. Ultimately, the parents gave their children to her, and literally the next day they could become victims of reprisals in the ghetto or were sent to death camps.
Irena was able to use the fascists' fear of an epidemic in the ghetto and found various ways to take children out of this hell. At the same time, she did not act alone, in all the stories about her activities in the ghetto other people are mentioned, there were really many of these people. For example, there is a famous truck driver, in the back of which the kids were taken out of the ghetto under a tarp. A truck carried disinfectants to the ghetto. The truck driver had a dog, which he put with him in the cab. According to one of the versions, he trained her to bark when leaving the ghetto, according to another, he simply stepped on the dog's foot, after which it started with plaintive barking. The barking should have drowned out the crying of small children if it had come from the back of the truck at that moment. Sendler and volunteer nurses helped, who gave the kids a small dose of sleeping pills, after which they took the children to the city with the corpses. There was also the famous tram number 4 "tram of life", as it was also called, it ran all over Warsaw and made stops inside the ghetto. The nurses hid the babies in cardboard boxes with holes to prevent them from suffocating, under the seats of this tram, shielding them with their bodies. In addition, Jewish children were taken out of the ghetto in bales and garbage bags with bloody bandages and garbage destined for city dumps. This is exactly how Irena Sendler took her adopted daughter Elжbetta Fitzowska, who was then only 6 months old, out of the ghetto in a basket with trash in July 1942. The girl's parents were killed by the Nazis.
Warsaw ghetto: Jews cross the bridge that connects parts of the ghetto, photo waralbum.ru
The kids were carried out of the ghetto, using also the sewers. Once Irena was able to hide the child even under her skirt. Older children were often led by secret passages through houses that adjoined the ghetto. Such operations were calculated literally in seconds. For example, one boy rescued from the Warsaw ghetto said that he, hiding, waited around the corner of the house until a German patrol passed, after which, counting to 30, he ran across the street to the sewer hatch, which by that time was already open from below. After that, he jumped into the hatch and went out through the sewers outside the ghetto.
For such actions, the death penalty awaited all those involved, but Irena and her comrades took the risk, because they understood that if the kids remained in the ghetto, they would almost certainly die. Sendler calculated that in order to save one child from the ghetto, about 12 people outside the ghetto, working in complete secrecy, are needed. These were also the drivers of various Vehicle, and Warsaw employees who took out ration cards, and numerous nurses. They also needed Polish families or religious parishes that were ready to receive Jewish children, sheltering them for a while and providing them with shelter and food. Rescued children were given new names and placed in sympathetic families, convents, hospitals and orphanages. Later, Irena recalled that no one refused her to shelter her saved children.
This small, chubby woman with a smile on her face was not only a very brave person, but also a very responsible worker and a good organizer. For each child rescued from the Warsaw ghetto, she issued a special card, which indicated his former name, as well as a new fictitious name, the address of the foster family and information about which family the children belonged to initially. Addresses and numbers of orphanages were also entered here, if children were transferred to them. Irena put all the data about the rescued children in glass jars, which she buried under a tree in her friend's garden. All this was done so that after the end of the war, children could be returned to their families. It was only after the war that it became known that there was no one to return many children. The Nazis killed not only their parents, but also their relatives. But even despite this, the information that Sendler kept was not in vain, since the children received their history, knew who they were and where they came from, and kept in touch with their past and their people.
Jews are driven by SS soldiers to the loading area (Umschlagplatz) during the Warsaw ghetto uprising, photo: waralbum.ru
Still, Sendler's luck couldn't last forever. In the second half of October 1943, she was seized by the Gestapo on the denunciation of the previously arrested owner of the laundry, in which one of the points of conspiratorial meetings was located. After her arrest, she was held in the "Serbia" corps of the Pawiak prison. She was terribly tortured in prison, but she did not betray any of her acquaintances, and she also did not tell about the saved Jewish children. As soon as the Germans found her archives buried in glass jars, the rescued children would have to say goodbye to their lives. Ultimately, Irene was sentenced to death penalty, however, she was saved. The guards who were supposed to accompany her to the execution were bribed by "Zhegota" and on November 13, 1943, she was secretly taken out of prison, while in official documents she was listed as executed. Until the end of the war, she hid under a false name, without ceasing to help Jewish children.
Irena Sendler's lists included more than 2,500 children rescued from the Warsaw ghetto, this list was about twice as long as Oskar Schindler's famous list. After the war, she dug up her hiding place and gave her lists to Adolf Berman, chairman of the Central Committee of Polish Jews (from 1947 to 1949). With the help of these lists, the staff of the committee managed to return some of the children to their families, and the orphans were placed in Jewish orphanages, from where they were later able to go to Israel.
The list of saved children brought Irene in 1965 the honorary title of "Righteous Among the Nations" and the medal of the same name, however, she had to wait another 18 years before she could visit Israel in order to plant her tree in the memory lane. The authorities of communist Poland simply did not let the woman out of the country. In 2003, Irena Sendler was awarded the Order of the White Eagle - the highest state award Poland, she was also an honorary resident of Warsaw and the city of Tarcin. In addition, in 2007 she was awarded the International Order of the Smile, becoming the oldest awarded. The Order of the Smile is an award given to famous people bringing joy to children. Irena Sendler was very proud of this order. Also in 2007, she was nominated by the President of Poland and the Prime Minister of Israel for the Nobel Peace Prize for saving almost 2,500 children's lives, but the award committee did not change the rules according to which she is awarded for actions committed over the past two years.
Irena Sendler in 2005
Irena Sendler lived a long and interesting life, having died in Warsaw on May 12, 2008 at the age of 98. She definitely had something to be proud of, while she never bragged about what she did during the Second World War, considering it absolutely normal and commonplace - to help those who died. It was always a sore subject for her, Irena was sure that she could do even more for them ...
Based on materials from open sources
Irena Sendler, an employee of the Warsaw Health Department, often visited the Warsaw ghetto, where she looked after sick children. Under this cover, she and her comrades took 2,500 children out of the ghetto, who were then transferred to Polish orphanages, private families and monasteries.
The babies were given sleeping pills, placed in small boxes with holes to prevent suffocation, and taken out in vehicles that delivered disinfectants to the camp. Some children were taken out through the basements of houses directly adjacent to the ghetto. Used for escapes and drainage hatches. Other children were carried out in bags, baskets, cardboard boxes.
Irene hid babies in a toolbox, older children under a tarp in the back of a truck. In addition, there was a dog in the back, trained to bark when the car was allowed into or out of the ghetto. According to another version, the dog was sitting in the cab, and the driver, when leaving the gate, stepped on its paw to make the dog bark. The barking of the dog drowned out the noise or crying of babies.
Irena Sendler wrote down the data of all the rescued children on narrow strips of tissue paper and hid this list in a glass bottle. The bottle was buried under an apple tree in the garden of a friend, in order to find the relatives of the children after the war.
On October 20, 1943, Irene was arrested on an anonymous denunciation. After being tortured, she was sentenced to death, but she was saved: the guards who accompanied her to the place of execution were bribed. In official papers, she was declared executed. Until the end of the war, Irena Sendler went into hiding, but continued to help Jewish children.
After the war, Sendler unearthed her cache of saved children and gave it to Adolf Berman (chairman of the Central Committee of Jews in Poland). With the help of this list, the staff of the committee tracked down the children and handed them over to their relatives. The orphans were placed in Jewish orphanages. Later, a significant part of them were transported to Palestine, and eventually to Israel. After the establishment of the communist regime in Poland, Irena Sendler was persecuted by the Polish authorities. people's republic for her cooperation with the Government of Poland in exile and the Home Army.
When Sendler was interrogated in 1949, she was pregnant. The boy (Andrzej) was born (11/9/1949) prematurely and died 11 days later.
Due to political differences, the Polish government did not let Irene Sendler out of the country at the Israeli invitation. She was able to visit Israel only after the fall of the communist regime and the change of government in Poland.
The last years of her life, Irena Sendler lived in a one-room apartment in the center of Warsaw.
In 1965, the Yad Vashem Israel Holocaust Museum awarded Irene Sendler the title of Righteous Among the Nations.
In 2003 she was awarded the Order of the White Eagle.
In 2007, the Polish President and Prime Minister of Israel nominated her for the Nobel Peace Prize for saving nearly 2,500 children's lives, but the prize was awarded to US Vice President Al Gore for her work in the study of global warming.
In 2007 she was awarded the International Order of the Smile.
Honorary citizen of the city of Warsaw and the city of Tarcin.
Her roster of 2,500, twice the length of Oskar Schindler's famous roster, earned her the Righteous Among the World medal in 1965. She had to wait 18 years before she could travel to Israel to plant her tree in the memory lane.
When Hitler's Wehrmacht invaded Poland in September 1939, Sendler was not yet thirty years old. Before the war, she worked in the social welfare department of the Warsaw municipality. And when the invaders introduced new laws against Jews and separated the Jewish population from the Poles, she could not stand aside and decided to take a risk.
The first year, Sendler was literally torn to pieces in order to somehow help the most needy Jewish families of 350 thousand prisoners. However, the closure of the entrance to the ghetto in 1940 significantly complicated the situation: there was a lack of food, children were exhausted, and epidemics began. "It was a real hell: hundreds of people were dying right in the streets, and the whole world was silently watching."
With the help of her old teacher, Sendler obtained a ghetto pass for herself and for several of her friends. The Nazis were afraid of epidemics, so the Poles were involved in sanitary checks inside the ghetto. Irena organized a whole system of assistance, using money from the city administration and charitable Jewish organizations. She carried food, necessities, coal, clothes to the ghetto. In the summer of 1942, when the deportation of Jews from the ghetto to the death camps began, Irena decided that there was no time to waste. Together with her friends, she searched for the addresses of the families where the children were, and suggested that the parents take the children out of the ghetto so that they could be raised in Polish families or orphanages under false names.
In 2006, the Polish President and Prime Minister of Israel nominated Sendler for the Nobel Prize. A year ago, Irena Sendler became a Knight of the Polish Order of the Smile - the only order in the world that is awarded to adult children.
In 2003, the President of Poland, Alexander Kwasniewski, awarded Irene Sandler the Order of the White Eagle.
"Novaya Gazeta" about Irene Sendler.
She rescued children in the Warsaw ghetto. It was a whole system of salvation in the very center of despair, hopelessness and darkness. Information about this woman was posted earlier in the community. But in this case there is more complete material.
In 1940 Irene Sendler was thirty years old. She went to the Warsaw ghetto and brought food, medicine, clothes there. Soon the Germans issued a ban on visiting the ghetto. Then Irena Sendler got a job in the municipality and continued to go there as an employee of the sanitary service. At this time, she was already a member of the underground Polish organization "Zegota", created to save Jews.
In the ghetto, Irena Sendler went from house to house, cellar, barracks, and everywhere she looked for families with children. She offered her parents to give her children to take them out of the ghetto. There is no guarantee. She could have been arrested when leaving the ghetto, they could have been snatched after being denounced, already outside the ghetto walls; the Germans could also find the children on the other side of the wall and send them to Treblinka. But still, the parents gave Irene Sendler their children. Different sources call a different number of children taken out of the ghetto by Irene Sendler, but no one cites a figure less than 2400. Age - from 6 months to 15 years.
Irena Sendler, this small chubby woman, was not only a brave person, but also a very organized, responsible worker. For each child, she got a card, where she wrote down his old name, his new name, as well as the address of the foster family. Much has been written and much is known about Polish anti-Semitism during the war, but there were also families that took their children with them during this time of famine, there was also the egota organization, and there was Irena Sendler. From Polish families, children were sent to orphanages as Polish children. Address and number orphanage Irena Sendler entered the card as well. It was a whole system of salvation that worked at the very center of despair, hopelessness, hunger, darkness and destruction.
Irena Sendler was arrested following an anonymous denunciation. The anonymous person has not yet been disclosed and will never be disclosed. This person goes into the darkness of time without a name and surname. Just a figure without a face and voice, just a dark silhouette against the background of a light window.
Remaining anonymous, he refused the reward. Hence, it was not self-interest that moved him.
He was a careful, circumspect person. He didn’t want to prank around with his denunciation in the light of public viewing. He reported where necessary, showed vigilance, satisfied his passion for order - and live peacefully on.
Irena Sendler went to the ghetto with an icon on which was written "I believe in God." With this icon, she got into the Gestapo. In the Gestapo Irene Sendler broke her arms and legs. The Germans wanted to know how Zhegota worked and who was behind it. By the way, any representatives of the authorities who are obsessed with their power want to know this. They cannot understand that no one is behind people, that people act of their own free will, at their own discretion. I do not compare anyone with anyone, I do not, in any way, compare the Nazi government in Poland with anyone. I am only talking about some of the mental traits that some people have in similar social positions. When I wrote about the equity holders who went on a hunger strike in Domodedovo, one representative of the authorities convinced me with ardor and ardor that there was someone behind the starving. The fact that people could fight for their rights on their own seemed impossible to him.
Irena Sendler buried a glass jar with her file cabinet in her friend's garden. She did not give the Germans the location of the tree under which the bank was buried, and thus prevented them from finding the children she had saved and sending them to Treblinka. She did not give out her comrades from the municipality, who were making documents for the children. She also did not betray those who helped her to take the children out through the courthouse adjacent to the ghetto. She not only did not betray anyone, she still has not forgotten how to smile. Everyone who met her writes that she always smiled. In all the photographs I have seen, there was a smile on her round face.
Irena Sendler did not act alone. For example, all the stories about her activities in the ghetto mention the driver of the truck, in the back of which she took the children out. In some sources it comes not about a truck, but about a cart, and not about a driver, but about a driver. Maybe this is confusion, or maybe there was a truck, and a cart, and a chauffeur, and a driver.
The driver had a dog, he put it with him in the cab. As soon as he saw the Germans, he mercilessly pressed the dog's paw, and the poor one would bark pitifully. The barking should have drowned out the crying if it was heard from the back at that moment. The dog did not understand what he was guilty of and why the owner in a heavy boot kicked her in the paw. But dogs learn quickly, and soon she was already barking at the first movement of the owner's leg. This dog also took part in saving the children.
There was not only the driver of the truck, and not only the driver of the cart, and not only the dog, which I imagine to be a mongrel big dog gray-red color, with a wet nose and glittering hungry eyes. There were also people who ransomed Irene Sendler from the Gestapo. The vaunted German bureaucracy turned out to be corrupt. It is fortunate that bureaucrats are corrupt, corruption in some conditions - the only way leading to saving life or to justice.
The amount for which the unknown Gestapo man agreed to release Irene Sendler from prison is not indicated anywhere. I think all the papers have been filled out correctly. That is, the execution protocol was written flawlessly and went to the authorities. In the accounting department, they put it in the correct folder and wrote out the corresponding amounts. Perhaps someone even received an award for being shot during non-working hours. A number of Reichsmarks were also written out for the cremation of the body, which, presumably, a Polish gravedigger or German soldier I put it in my pocket with peace of mind and drank it in the pub.
Only the execution itself was not .
The ransomed Irene Sendler with broken arms and legs and a face swollen from beatings was thrown out of the car by the Germans in the forest.
The people from Zhegota picked her up. The icon was with her. The underground provided her with documents for a different name. Until the end of the war, she did not appear in the ghetto. And there was nowhere to appear: in the spring of 1943, the Germans decided to finally liquidate the ghetto. The SS units, entering the ghetto, ran into fire, which was fired from roofs, from windows and even from underground sewers. This was the first uprising in an occupied European city, and the Germans were unable to suppress it for two months. They dealt with France faster.
After the war, Irena Sendler opened her glass jar. She was a very stubborn woman. She took out her cards and tried to find the saved children and their parents. She was the only one who knew what Polish names the Jewish children brought out of the ghetto bear and what orphanages they live in. It didn’t work, she didn’t manage to reunite the families. The children no longer had parents.
Irena Sendler lived quietly in her one-room apartment in Warsaw. I was in Warsaw in 1983. Martial law has just been declared in Poland. I remember wandering the gloomy, snowy streets and entering Catholic churches. I remember a pallet in a grocery store, on which a lone bone with meat growths lay in a pool of blood. I remember the gloomy faces of the Poles. Now I think that during those my wanderings in an unfamiliar city, in those shops among gloomy people, in those cathedrals where I stood as a quiet stranger behind the backs of those praying, I could meet her. What a pity I didn't.
On a dark, cold morning, I once stood on a long snow-covered platform - I don't remember what city it was - and waited for the train. The trains in Poland were either gray or gray, and their clanging and clattering sounded with melancholy. I was wandering through the untouched snow, waiting for a train, and suddenly I saw a table with a train schedule, which indicated at what time and from which platform the train was leaving for Auschwitz.
In 2006, when Irene Sendler was 96 years old, the government of Poland and the government of Israel nominated her for the Nobel Peace Prize. In connection with the nomination for the award, newspapers wrote about her for the first time that year. It was then that Irena Sendler and her story became known to many people. I read several newspaper publications in which they wrote about her as a laureate even before the award. But the award went to US Vice President Al Gore for his lecture on energy conservation.
Of course, it is surprising that in choosing between Irene Sendler and Al Gore, the Nobel Committee chose Gore. It seems to me that after that the Nobel Peace Prize can no longer be awarded. This is a dummy, in which there is no point, but only money. The prize was disgraced. It is even more surprising to me that Albert Gore, a respectable man who lives in a big house, does not need anything, belongs, as they say, to the strong of the world this, he accepted the award. The rich became even richer, the well-fed became even more well-fed, the world nomenklatura divided one more piece among themselves, and the little quiet woman, as she lived in her one-room apartment in Warsaw, remained to live there.
I knew about Irene Sendler for a long time. I read about her in various sources. And every time, reading about her, I told myself that I should write about her, but every time I put off this matter. Because I felt the inconsistency of this whole story with the arsenal of words at my disposal. I'm not sure I can tell it in words. About a young woman who walked to the ghetto day after day, about the chauffeur, about the dog, about the glass jar buried in the garden. Before certain topics and events, the human language - at least my language - faints.
The other day I received a letter from an addressee unknown to me. It was a distant echo of the mailing list, which was started by no one knows who and no one knows when. More and more people were involved in the mailing list, and my address accidentally got into it. The entire letter consisted of a summary of Irena Sendler's story. The letter ended like this: “I am making my small contribution by forwarding this letter to you. I hope you do the same. More than sixty years have passed since the end of World War II in Europe. This email is being sent out as a memory chain of millions of people who have been killed, shot, raped, burned, starved and humiliated!
Become a link in the chain of memory, help us spread the letter around the world. Send it to your friends and ask them not to break this chain.
Please don't just delete this letter. After all, it will take no more than a minute to forward it ”.
Here I have forwarded this letter to you.
Alexey Polikovsky