Subscribe to Print Edition | Sat., May 17, 2008 Iyyar 12, 5768 | | Israel Time: 03:50 (EST+7) web haaretz.com   Back to Homepage Rosner's Domain Diplomacy Defense Jewish World Opinion National Print Edition Advertising Books Peres Conference Business Real Estate Easy Start Travel Week's End Anglo File

Irena Sendler (AP) Last update - 14:22 12/05/2008 Irena Sendler, who saved 2,500 Jews from Holocaust, dies at 98 By The Associated Press Tags: Poland, Holocaust  Irena Sendler - a Polish social worker who helped save some 2,500 Jewish children from the Nazis by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto and giving them false identities - has died. She was 98. Sendler died at a Warsaw hospital on Monday morning, her daughter, Janina Zgrzembska, said. She had been hospitalized since last month with pneumonia. Advertisement Sendler was serving as a social worker with the city's welfare department during World War II when she masterminded the risky rescue operations of Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto during Nazi Germany's brutal World War II occupation. Records show that Sendler's team of some 20 people saved nearly 2,500 children from the Warsaw Ghetto between October 1940 and April 1943, when the Nazis burned the ghetto, shooting the residents or sending them to death camps. "A great person has died - a person with a great heart, with great organizational talents, a person who always stood on the side of the weak," Marek Edelman, the last surviving leader of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising, told TVN24 television. Under the pretext of inspecting the ghetto's sanitary conditions during a typhoid outbreak, Sendler and her assistants went inside in search of children who could be smuggled out and given a chance of survival by living as Catholics. Babies and small children were smuggled out in ambulances and in trams, sometimes wrapped up as packages. Teenagers escaped by joining teams of workers forced to labor outside the ghetto. They were placed in families, orphanages, hospitals or convents. In hopes of one day uniting the children with their families - most of whom perished in the Nazis' death camps - Sendler wrote the children's real names on slips of paper that she kept at home. When German police came to arrest her in 1943, an assistant managed to hide the slips, which Sendler later buried in a jar under an apple tree in an associate's yard. Some 2,500 names were recorded. "It took a true miracle to save a Jewish child," Elzbieta Ficowska, who was saved by Sendler's team as a baby in 1942, recalled in an AP interview in 2007. Mrs. Sendler saved not only us, but also our children and grandchildren and the generations to come. Anyone caught helping Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland risked being summarily shot, along with family members - a fate Sendler only barely escaped herself after the 1943 raid by the Gestapo. The Nazis took her to the Pawiak prison, which few left alive. She was tortured and was left with permanent scarring on her body - but she refused to betray her team. "I kept silent. I preferred to die than to reveal our activity," she was quoted as saying in Anna Mieszkowska's biography, Mother of the Children of the Holocaust: The Story of Irena Sendler. Zegota, an underground organization helping Jews, for which she worked at the time, paid a bribe to German guards to free her from the prison. Under a different name, she continued her work. After World War II, Sendler worked as a social welfare official and director of vocational schools, continuing to assist some of the children she rescued. Sendler's daughter once told the AP that during her childhood, the family house was always full of people asking for help, chiefly looking for their lost relatives. In 1965, Sendler became one of the first Righteous Gentiles honored by the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem for wartime heroics. Poland's communist leaders at that time would not allow her to travel to Israel; she collected the award in 1983. Despite the Yad Vashem honor, Sendler was largely forgotten in her homeland. Only in her final years, confined to a nursing home, did she finally become one of Poland's most respected figures, with President Lech Kaczynski and other politicians backing a campaign that put her name forward for the Nobel Peace Prize. That effort came after her name was brought to the world's attention in 2000 by a group of U.S. schoolgirls from Uniontown, Kansas, who wrote a short play about her bravery based on historic records called Life in a Jar. It went on to garner international attention, and has been performed more than 200 times in the United States, Canada and Poland. Sendler, born Irena Krzyzanowska, was 2 years old when her family moved from Warsaw to nearby Otwock, where her father, a doctor, directed a spa hospital. He died of typhoid fever in 1917. Sendler said she lived according to her father's teachings, arguing that people can be only divided into good or bad; their race, religion, nationality don't matter. Before the war, she married Mieczyslaw Sendler, but they divorced when the war was over. She then married another underground activist, Stefan Zgrzembski, and they had two sons and a daughter. One of the boys died a few days after birth. The second son, Adam, died of a heart failure in 1999. Sendler is survived by her daughter and a granddaughter. Related articles: Poland's Senate honors woman who saved 2,500 Jews from Holocaust Polish righteous Gentile woman recommended for Nobel Prize Polish film recounts heroism of Poles who helped Jews in WWII More Jewish world news and features Bookmark to del.icio.us   Animated massacre Animated Israeli film at Cannes explores Sabra and Shatila massacre. Kowtowing to funders When papers are sponsored, can their reporting be truly independent?   1.   May You Rest In Peace 11:55  |  Tom 12/05/08   2.   Irena Sendler was a hero 12:09  |  Cecilia Mandelbaum 12/05/08   3.   Rest in Peace, the angel Irena Sendler! 13:11  |  Mel McManus 12/05/08   4.   God Bless This Woman 13:53  |  Chris 12/05/08   5.   the price of saving 14:15  |  david wolgroch 12/05/08   6.   a Hero of Israel 14:27  |  augustine e johnson 12/05/08   7.   Irena Sendler - A remarkable hero 14:46  |  Ami 12/05/08   8.   Irena 14:49  |  sceptnick 12/05/08   9.   A true hero 15:31  |  Bob 12/05/08   10.   #5 16:07  |  Moshe 12/05/08   11.   #5 david wolgroch Prove it! 16:47  |  protest 12/05/08   12.   God bless this good Christian 17:01  |  dan 12/05/08   13.   david wolgroch 17:05  |  Genuine Tosefta 12/05/08   14.   We Lost a Great Human Being! an Angel! 17:11  |  Max Zinger,P.Chimist 12/05/08   15.   # 11 Protest; Please, just ignore Wolgrowich, he trieves 17:17  |  Max Zamir 12/05/08   16.   IRENA SENDLER WAS WORTH ANY PRIZE 17:50  |  DAVID DASTYCH 12/05/08   17.   God was sent an angel 18:09  |  Gadi Peller 12/05/08   18.   It`s the Poles like Irena the Jewish nation respects and honors 18:23  |  Avraham 12/05/08   19.   So much blessing from God 18:26  |  donald 12/05/08   20.   A great person indeed 18:28  |  Palestinian in UK 12/05/08   21.   She has 18:30  |  Tarek 12/05/08   22.   Dear Jews, do not read Antisemites and Jihadi posts on this 19:06  |  Genuine Tosefta 12/05/08   23.   Irena Sendler Remembered 19:09  |  Ray 12/05/08   24.   Thank G-d for the Irena Sendler`s! 19:49  |  Claudia 12/05/08   25.   Irena Sendler belongs to the ages now... 20:14  |  Jack 12/05/08   26.   What a radiant countenance she has 20:14  |  Gina 12/05/08   27.   The epitome of bravey!!! 20:18  |  spade 12/05/08   28.   Compassion at its best 21:46  |  gus 12/05/08   29.   Mat Irena Sendler rest in peace 21:57  |  KUTW 12/05/08   30.   Sendlers Jews, Awesome Story 22:40  |  ROBOCOP 12/05/08   31.   This great lady is in heaven now! 22:56  |  Chris 12/05/08   32.   #5 22:58  |  Marcin 12/05/08   33.   He survived anyway, obviously ,... 23:10  |  split 12/05/08   34.   What a courageous and loving human being 23:18  |  Lynn 12/05/08   35.   # 21 Tarek.....too bad there are none 23:20  |  Lynn 12/05/08   36.   Today`s world needs multitudes like Irena Sendler Heroine 23:54  |  Joseph.E 12/05/08   37.   Irena Sendler 00:33  |  Jakub 13/05/08   38.   Irena Sendler 04:48  |  Sara 13/05/08   39.   #1 Tom`s tribute 07:36  |  hala 13/05/08   40.   #14 Pan Max Zinger, z powazaniem! 07:48  |  hala 13/05/08   41.   She makes us seem foolish 08:21  |  Ziad 13/05/08   42.   Canonize her to bond both faiths 09:19  |  Survivor Son 13/05/08   43.   A photograph 10:56  |  Chris 13/05/08   44.   Irena Sendler 11:27  |  Tony 13/05/08   45.   Irena Sendler 12:32  |  Mariusz 13/05/08   46.   Remarkable woman 14:05  |  Elwira 13/05/08   47.   David Wolgroch 15:46  |  Chaval 13/05/08   48.   An example to follow 16:31  |  Betzalel 13/05/08   49.   Was she a real hero or a fake one? 17:15  |  Roxana from IRAN 13/05/08   50.   Roxana from IRAN - the question is 18:32  |  ChanahS 13/05/08   51.   Roxana: continue to explore the facts. Irena was REAL hero 18:44  |  Arthur 13/05/08   52.   Roxy will soon go up in smoke, so it doesn`t matter what she says 19:49  |  Genuine Tosefta 13/05/08   53.   May we all merit a place as close to the Creator 21:12  |  Avi 13/05/08   54.   #52 Tostefa, I am not surprised as you`re an Israeli 21:44  |  Roxana from IRAN 13/05/08   55.   To #35 Lynn 21:48  |  Tarek 13/05/08   56.   Channah S, same doubts about you 21:50  |  Roxana from IRAN 13/05/08   57.   Arthur , Our martyrs were hero as well, you suported Saddam! 22:07  |  Roxana from IRAN 13/05/08   58.   brave people 22:13  |  Justyna 13/05/08   59.   A Prayer for the Deceased Irena Sendler, 22:49  |  Ted & Tere Jankowski 13/05/08   60.   Irena and Roxana 23:29  |  fiona 13/05/08   61.   Irena Sendler has saved the entire world x 2,500 23:30  |  Tadek from Canada 13/05/08   62.   HEROINA POR SIEMPRE 19:51  |  Alexis Flores 15/05/08   63.   #42 to Survivor Son 10:29  |  Kucku Muruku 16/05/08   64.   Irena Sendler 03:33  |  Arleta Sziler 17/05/08

Read & React Israel protests UN chief Ban Ki-Moon's use of term 'nakba' Responses: 387 PMO: U.S., Israel see need for 'tangible action' on Iran nukes Responses: 122 Shmuel Rosner: Bush, Obama and the 'appeasement' jibe Responses: 86 Bin Laden vows to 'fight' Israel for Palestinian land Responses: 197 Sultan al-Qassemi: Arab Jews should be welcomed back in their ancestral homes Responses: 126 Rosner's Domain Bush should be measured by the yardstick he prescribed to Obama The greatest achievement and failure of the Jewish people