In the preface to the second volume of the Ringelblum Archive, a Polish historian Feliks Tych (1929-2015), stated that from at least the summer of 1941, the Third Reich waged the first war in the history of the world against children, especially against Jewish children, in occupied Polish areas. Tych wrote, “The murder of children became one of Hitler’s military goals.” (…) This death sentence was carried out before the world audience who was blind to this crime and had the only alibi – disbelief”.
Nevertheless, Irena Sendler (1910-2008) and many other people did not remain passive in the face of the tragedy of Jewish children imprisoned in ghettos. Her history of rescuing and her allegiance to the youngest, most innocent victims of the Holocaust are known all over the world today. We inseparably associate all her activities with the Council to Aid Jews at the Government Delegation for Poland, which was commonly called “Żegota”. It should be emphasized that it was the only underground organization in occupied Europe that specialized in helping and saving Jews sentenced to death. As part of this structure, Sendler was in charge of the children’s section.
Her heroic activity was described not only in many books but also presented in many artistic projects. After the war, Sendler herself, as a witness to history, managed to tell a lot of details about rescuing Jews during the war. It is estimated that Żegota, individuals and organizations cooperating with Sendler, made an attempt to save over 2.5 thousand of Jewish children. Many of them owe their lives to the Mother of the Children of Holocaust, as Sendler was called.
Her life’s work, however, was not limited to helping the youngest Jews. Less is said about her dedication to adults who were persecuted, robbed, and then imprisoned in the Warsaw ghetto. She was providing aid to such people until the summer of 1942, when the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto began. Sendler’s excellent contacts resulted from the pre-war relations between Sendler and many Jews. Constructing the ghetto wall in the center of Warsaw did not interrupt these acquaintances, and even intensified them, because her Jewish friends needed various help.
Having been employed at the Social Welfare and Public Health Department of the Municipal Council of the Capital City of Warsaw she met many Jews at work before the war. Her best friend was Ewa Rechtman who worked with Irena Sendler, teaching Slavic studies as an assistant at the Faculty of Humanities of the Free University. When Germany occupied Warsaw, Ewa Rechtman along with other Jews was dismissed from the City Council.
Irena Sendler began helping Jewish friends at the Welfare Department at Wolska Street 4. It is significant that Sendler was a double underground resistance agent, belonging to the squad of the Polish Socialist Party. Providing Polish soldiers with false certificates enabling them to collect a monthly allowance and use the canteen, she also helped Jewish friends. Without the acceptance of her party friends, she prepared for the Jews the same allowances as for the soldiers and brought them to the canteen, where they received additional food packages.
This help was quickly expanded. Using the workplace, under the direction of Jadwiga Piotrowska (1903-1994), together with Jadwiga Sałek-Denko and Irena Schulz Sedler, she developed a system for falsifying documentation so that help from the city could reach the needed Jews. As the Germans tightened their controls, it had to be done wisely. Forging documents had to take place in three places, firstly in registration books that were at the disposal of house administrators, then in the municipal Registry Department and in the Welfare Department, where all three women worked. To succeed, it was necessary, firstly, to persuade the selected person to register a Jewish tenant fictitiously, secondly, to find a trusted “contact” in the Registry Department, and thirdly, to register the ward in the file at the Welfare Department. The conspirators also had to protect such fictitiously registered people against unexpected visits. They posted information about dangerous infectious diseases at their places, which discouraged potential visits.
The forms of friendly help had to change when the Germans erected a brick wall on November 16, 1940, and it became clear to all Warsovians that a ghetto would be created in the center of a European capital, modeled on medieval solutions.
Sendler and her trusted friends could visit the ghetto legally and frequently, because they had sanitary passes. They were published by Juliusz Majkowski – the director of the Municipal Sanitary Plant, whose task was to control the typhus spreading in the ghetto. Thanks to Majkowski’s kindness, they visited friends, providing them with medicines, cleaning products and clothes that they smuggled. Their help was invaluable. Coming from the outside world, they could help and uplift their Jewish friends, trying to alleviate their fate. Sendler listened to their stories and tried to help as much as she could. Sometimes, the only salvation was Weigl’s vaccine, obtained with difficulty in the winter of 1941-1942, when typhus took a terrible toll, or finding a job in some ghetto organization, which improved the financial situation of her Jewish friends. During her visit to the ghetto, Sendler even managed to educate herself; she took part in lectures of Dr Henryk Landau or Ludwik Hirszfeld (1884-1954). She also participated in numerous conspiratorial meetings, getting to know the real life of the ghetto.
Other Jews wanted to inform Poles about what was happening inside the ghetto walls. Sendler carried ghetto press, copied on a smuggled duplicator. This conspiracy activity allowed her to meet the lawyer Antoni Oppenheim and Jerzy Neuding, writing for the socialist periodical “Underground Ghetto”.
At that time, the future Mother of the Children of the Holocaust was named “Klara” – it was her official and underground pseudonym she assumed when she was active in the left-wing Workers’ Party of Polish Socialists. Then she transformed her nickname from “Klara” into “Jolanta”, focusing on the rescue efforts of Jewish children under the Żegota activities.
Wishing to outline the experiences of Irena Sendler from that period in the ghetto, Anna Bikont, an outstanding writer, journalist and the author of her best biography, quoted her post-war reflections on the inhabitants of the “Jewish quarter”: “I want to show the young generation of Jews in the Diaspora that they are wrong believing that the Jews were going to their deaths, resigned, without a fight. That’s not true. I want to present their daily fight, full of dignity and selfless sacrifice, fight for every slice of bread or medicine, for those they loved. Every day, every hour, every minute in that hell was a struggle”.
It can be said that Sendler fought together with the inhabitants of this outrageous place. This reality quickly became her everyday life as she sometimes entered the ghetto several times a day. She had to wear an armband with the Star of David in order not to attract the attention of both the Germans and the Jews who did not know her.
Due to her excellent knowledge of the ghetto conditions, Sendler, along with several other people, in the summer of 1942, was given the task of showing the ghetto reality to a man who was designated by the Polish Underground State to get acquainted with the ghetto situation. He entered it through a tunnel under Muranowska Street. After the war, the participants of this expedition found out that this person was Jan Karski (1914-2000), who transported the information about the tragic fate of the Jews in ghetto to the West. Soon after his visit, the Warsaw Ghetto ceased to exist as it was.