This month we remember Irena Sendler who who saved many lives as a righteous person. Irena Stanislawa Sendler was born on February 15, 1910, in Warsaw, Poland. Her father, Dr.Stanislaw Krzyanowski died in 1917 from typhus. After his death, Jewish community leaders offered her mother help for Sendler’s education. Sendler studied Polish literature and opposed the ghetto-bench system that defaced her grade card. As a result of public protesting the system, she was suspended from the University of Warsaw. Years later, when the Germans invaded Warsaw, Irena began helping Jews by offering them food and shelter. But when the Warsaw Ghetto was erected in 1940, she could no longer help isolated Jews. She instead started saving orphan children. She oversaw the Children’s Division of Zegota (a Polish underground group to assist Jewish people). Sendler used her papers as a Polish social worker and as a worker at the Contagious Disease Department to enter the Warsaw Ghetto. Irena, along with help, made over 3,000 false documents to help Jewish families and rescued 2,500 Jewish children in Poland during World War 2. She used many methods to smuggle children out and made sure that each family hiding a child realized the child must return to their Jewish relatives after the war.

Sendler was arrested on October 20, 1943, and placed in the Piawiak prison where she was questioned and tortured. She was to be sentenced to death but bribed the German executioner who helped her escape. On the following day the Germans loudly proclaimed her execution, but Irena was one of many who read them herself. During the remaining of the war, she lived hidden. When the war ended, she dug up the bottles and began the job of finding the children and finding a living parent. Almost all the parents of the children Irena saved had died in Treblinka death camp.

In September 1999, ‘Life in a Jar’ was started as a National History Day. By 2001 there were over 750,00 web sites on the Internet mentioning Sendler. When she first heard about the project she was stunned and fascinated. Her story became known to the world through the Life in a Jar project. Sendler was announced as the 2003 winner of the Jan Karski award for Valor and Courage. Sendler died in Warsaw, Poland on May 12, 2008, but her story still lives on.