A Saintly Smuggler
This Thursday, Irena Sendler will be honored for her work as a smuggler. During World War II, the Polish social worker sneaked nearly 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw ghetto. She gave them new identities, found them haven with good-hearted Christians, and kept the children's real names buried in jars in her neighbors' gardens. (A U.S. News story about her efforts, published in 1994, inspired a group of Kansas teens to write a play, Life in a Jar, that is still being performed; see irenasendler.org.) At 93, Sendler lives in a Warsaw nursing home and is too frail to travel to Washington, D.C., to receive the 2003 Jan Karski Award for Valor and Compassion from the American Center of Polish Culture. One of the children she saved will accept the award on her behalf.
You risked your life to save the children.
I was taught by my father that when someone is drowning, you don't ask if they can swim, you just jump in and help. During the war, everyone was drowning, but mostly the Jewish children.
How did you convince parents to give up their children?
I had to answer honestly that I didn't even know if we would get past the guards.
What was the most frightening moment?
When I saw a priest in charge of an orphanage for Jewish children in the ghetto walk with them out to be killed. The children were in their best Sunday suits. The priest was killed with them.
How did you get the children to behave as you smuggled them out?
I told the older children to act as if they were sick and sometimes gave the younger ones a sleeping pill. Some of the mothers in the ghetto who wanted their children smuggled out also had prepared the children for weeks, telling them their new names. They also told the children to tell guards they had only been visiting a servant in the ghetto and were going back to their real homes outside.
Did you tell your own two children what you did?
I never told them. Only when my daughter went to Israel did she learn all about me. I thought it was so normal that I was helping, so there was nothing to boast about. And it was a very painful subject. It was always on my mind that I couldn't do more. -Samantha Levine
This story appears in the October 27, 2003 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
advertisement
