Irena's Children The extraordinary story of the woman who saved 2,500 children from the Warsaw ghetto

Tilar J. Mazzeo

Large print - 2016

In 1942, one young social worker, Irena Sendler, was granted access to the Warsaw ghetto as a public health specialist. While there, she reached out to the trapped Jewish families, going from door to door and asking the parents to trust her with their young children. She started smuggling them out of the walled district, convincing her friends and neighbors to hide them. Driven to extreme measures and with the help of a network of local tradesmen, ghetto residents, and her star-crossed lover in the Jewish resistance, Irena ultimately smuggled thousands of children past the Nazis. She made dangerous trips through the city's sewers, hid children in coffins, snuck them under overcoats at checkpoints, and slipped them through secret passag...es in abandoned buildings. But Irena did something even more astonishing at immense personal risk: she kept secret lists buried in bottles under an old apple tree in a friend's back garden. On them were the names and true identities of those Jewish children, recorded with the hope that their relatives could find them after the war. She could not have known that more than ninety percent of their families would perish.

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Subjects
Genres
Biographies
Published
Farmington Hills, Michigan : Thorndike Press, A part of Gale, Cengage Learning 2016.
Language
English
Main Author
Tilar J. Mazzeo (author)
Edition
Large print edition
Physical Description
587 pages (large print), 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 23 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 555-583).
ISBN
9781410493101
  • Becoming Irena Sendler
  • Dr. Radlińska's girls
  • Those walls of shame
  • The youth circle
  • Calling Dr. Korczak
  • Ghetto juggernaut
  • Road to Treblinka
  • The good fairy of the Umschlagplatz
  • The last mile
  • Agents of the resistance
  • Żegota
  • Toward the precipice
  • Ala rising
  • Aleja Szucha
  • Irena's execution
  • Warsaw fighting
  • How the stories ended
  • Coda: The disappearing story of Irena Sendler, 1946-2008
  • Afterword: Author's note on the story of Irena's Children.
Review by New York Times Review

Raoul Wallenberg and Oskar Schindler have become synonymous with saving Jews during the Holocaust. Irena Sendler, a Polish social worker, deserves to be mentioned in the same breath. As the leader of the children's section of the underground organization Zegota, the Catholic and avowedly socialist Sendler snatched some 2,500 young souls from the Nazis. In the beginning, she and approximately two dozen compatriots falsified documents, fudged statistics and exaggerated reports of communicable diseases - all to obscure the identities of potential victims and secure resources to keep them alive. Then, as the Warsaw ghetto was annihilated, the efforts involved literal escapes, the dwindling few sometimes being smuggled out amid dirty linen or in coffins. The Gestapo caught up with Sendler in 1943, but she didn't break under torture. En route to her execution, her guard told her, "You lousy thug, get lost" and punched her in the mouth: Her cohort had arranged her rescue by bribing him. Sendler survived the war, dying in 2008 at the age of 98, honored with Israeli recognition as Righteous Among the Nations, personal praise from Pope John Paul II and Poland's highest civilian decoration, the Order of the White Eagle. Of the many revelations in this incredible account, one that stands out is Sendler's potentially fatal recordkeeping. It was partly a matter of pure accounting; her monthly budget amounted to about $750,000 today, and, as she said of these sums, it was essential "to prove that they had been received by those for whom they were destined." Far more important was her meticulous notation of the identities of the children, scrawled in the hope - almost entirely vain, it turned out - that they could reconnect with their families after the war. But Sendler herself later met many of them, and several were at her deathbed. She was, one witness said, "the brightest star in the black sky of the occupation." THOMAS VINCIGUERRA is the author of "Cast of Characters: Wolcott Gibbs, E.B. White, James Thurber, and the Golden Age of The New Yorker."

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [November 20, 2016]
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Mazzeo (The Hotel on Place Vendome), associate professor of English at Colby College, profiles the little-known Irena Sendler, a young Polish social worker dubbed "the female [Oskar] Schindler" for her work smuggling Jewish children out of Warsaw during WWII. Sendler headed a network, and later an organization (Zegota), that found more than 2,000 children places of refuge among families and in convents, saving them from deportation and death. Mazzeo shows the variety of strategies and ruses Sendler and her allies used to snatch Jewish children to safety, including setting up a medical station at the collection center for deportation; the intense debates over whether convents sheltering Jewish children had the right to baptize them; and how Sendler survived arrest, torture, and near execution. Sendler's personal life also receives attention, including her affair with Adam Cenikier, a Jewish social revolutionary and fellow resistance fighter. Mazzeo's writing is largely clear, though she is occasionally sketchy with details, as when noting without elaborating that American Jews helped fund Zegota. While this is not the first biography of Sendler, its succinctness and overall readability will introduce many readers to a truly brave and otherwise remarkable woman who initiated and spearheaded "a vast collective effort of decency." (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

Irena Sendler (1910-2008), a Polish student and social worker, with courage and the collaboration of other brave individuals, saved thousands of Jewish children during World War II. Beginning with small acts of resistance, Sendler eventually was smuggling babies and young children out of the Warsaw ghetto in coffins, toolboxes, and bags left on train cars. Led by Sendler and others in her network, the children were housed in safe places where their identities were changed. Mazzeo (English, Colby Coll.; The Widow Clicquot) explains how Sendler documented the children's new names on scraps of paper with the hope that these lists would someday reunite them with their families. Sadly, few parents survived the war. The actions of Sendler and other Polish residents who bravely protected Jewish children were often overlooked. It wasn't until the 1990s that these acts of courage began to receive their due. VERDICT Sendler risked her life and the lives of her coworkers, friends, and family to help others. This account of tremendous bravery is recommended for teens and adults who are drawn to inspirational stories. [See Prepub Alert, 3/21/16.]-Beth -Dalton, Littleton, CO © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Irena's Children Prologue Warsaw, October 21, 1943 Aleja Szucha. Irena Sendler knew her destination. The door slammed shut up front, and the black prison car lurched into motion. She had been given only minutes to dress, and her fair, bobbed hair was bed tousled. Janka Grabowska had run down the front path with her shoes and thrust them at her at the last moment, braving the violent caprices of the soldiers. Irena hadn't thought to lace them. She was focusing on just one thing: staying calm and keeping her face blank, placid. No sad faces. That was the wisdom Jewish mothers gave to their children when they left them for the last time in the care of strangers. Irena wasn't Jewish, but it was still true that sad faces were dangerous. They must not think I have any reason to be frightened. They must not think I am frightened. Irena repeated that thought silently. It would only make what was coming harder if they suspected what she was hiding. But Irena was frightened. Very frightened. In the autumn of 1943 in Nazi-occupied Poland, there were no words more terrifying than "Szucha Avenue." There may have been no words more terrifying anywhere in wartime Europe. It was the address of the Gestapo headquarters in Warsaw. The brutalism of its exterior seemed cruelly suited to the Germans' purpose. From inside the squat complex of buildings, the corridors echoed with the screams of those being questioned. Those who survived remembered afterward the rank scent of fear and urine. Twice a day, just before noon and in the early evening, black vans punctually returned from the holding cells at Pawiak Prison to collect the bruised and broken bodies. Irena guessed that it was just after six o'clock in the morning now. Maybe six thirty already. Soon the late October sun would be rising over Warsaw. But Irena had been awake for hours. So had everyone in the apartment building. Janka, her trusted liaison and a dear friend, had joined a small family celebration for the feast of Saint Irena that night. After gorging on cold cuts and slices of cake, Irena's frail mother and her visiting aunt retreated to the bedroom. But Janka had already missed the curfew and would have to spend the night. So the younger women camped out in the living room and sat up late, talking and drinking tea and cordials. After midnight, Irena and Janka dozed at last, and by three a.m. the girls were sleeping soundly on makeshift cots. But in the back room, Irena's mother, Janina, was restless. How Janina had enjoyed hearing the carefree murmur of the girls' voices! She knew from her daughter's taut jawline that Irena was taking chances, and she had a mother's heavy worry. Pain made it hard to sleep, and so Janina let the thoughts carry her. Then, in the darkness, came a sound that she knew was wrong. The heavy thudding of boots echoed from a stairwell somewhere. Irena! Irena! Janina hissed in an urgent whisper that penetrated Irena's dreams. Bolting awake, Irena heard only the anxiety in her mother's tone and knew in an instant what it meant. Those few moments to clear her head were the difference between life and death for all of them. What came next was the racket of eleven Gestapo agents pounding at the apartment door, demanding entry. The fear brought a strange, metallic taste to Irena's mouth, and underneath her rib cage the terror came and went in shocks that felt electric. For hours the Germans spewed threats and abuse, gutted the pillows, and tore apart the corners and cupboards. They pulled up floorboards and broke furniture. Somehow they still didn't find the lists of the children. The lists now were all that mattered. They were just thin and flimsy scraps of cigarette paper, little more than rolled bits of tissue, part of Irena's private filing system. But written on them in a code of her own invention were the names and addresses of some of the thousands of Jewish children whom Irena and her friends had saved from the horrors of Nazi persecution--children they were still hiding and supporting in secret locations all across the city and beyond Warsaw. At the last possible instant, before the door flew open, giving way to the bludgeons and pounding, Irena tossed the lists on the kitchen table over to Janka, who with brazen aplomb stuffed them into her generous brassiere, deep under her armpit. If they searched Janka, God knew, it would be all over. It would be even worse if they searched Janka's apartment, where there were Jews hiding. Irena could hardly believe it when the Germans themselves covered up the worst bit of incriminating evidence: she watched, mesmerized, as a small bag with forged identity papers and wads of illegal cash was buried under the debris of smashed furniture. She wanted nothing more than to fall to her knees in that moment. And when she understood that the Gestapo wasn't arresting Janka or her mother but only her, she was positively giddy. But she knew that the laughter rising inside her was tinged dangerously with hysteria. Dress, she told herself. Dress and leave here quickly. She threw on the well-worn skirt she had folded over the back of the kitchen chair only hours earlier and buttoned her sweater as fast as she could to speed her departure before the agents had a chance to reconsider, and walked out of the apartment into the cold autumn morning barefoot. She hadn't even noticed until Janka came running. Now, though, she had time to think about her own dilemma as the car swayed at each street corner. Sooner or later there was no question that they would kill her. Irena understood that already. This was how her story ended. People did not return from Aleja Szucha or from the ghetto prison at Pawiak, where arrestees were locked up in between their bone-crushing interrogations. They did not return from the camps like Auschwitz or Ravensbrück, where the innocent "survivors" of the Gestapo were deported. And Irena Sendler was not innocent. The sedan cranked hard to the right as it headed southeast across the still-sleeping city. The most direct route would take them toward Warsaw's broad prewar avenues, first skirting west and then south of the wasteland that had once been the Jewish ghetto. During the first years of the Nazi occupation, Irena had been in and out of the ghetto three or four times a day sometimes, each time risking arrest or summary execution, trying to help to save some of their old school friends, their Jewish professors . . . and thousands of small children. Now, in late 1943, there was only ruin and rubble. It was a killing ground, an endless graveyard. The ghetto had been leveled after the Jewish uprising that spring, and her friend Ala Gołąb-Grynberg had disappeared inside that inferno. Word in the underground whispered that Ala was still alive, in the forced-labor camp at Poniatowa, one of a group of young militants secretly planning their escape from the prison. Irena hoped that, when this barbaric war was over, Ala would make it back to collect her small daughter, Rami, from the orphanage where Irena had her hidden. The prison car passed a few blocks north of what had once been the Polish Free University. The institution was another war casualty. Irena had completed her degree in social work across town, at the University of Warsaw, but she had been a frequent presence on the Polish Free University campus in the 1930s, and it was there, thanks to Professor Helena Radlińska, that her resistance cell had been formed. They had been, almost to the last one, Dr. Radlińska's girls in the days before the occupation. Now they were part of a well-organized and daring network, and the professor had been the inspiration for that too. It was a network of urgent interest to her captors. Irena was in her early thirties now, but her girlish, waifish looks were deceiving. The Gestapo had just captured one of the most important figures in the Polish underground. Irena could only hope that the Germans did not know it. Crammed in beside her, a soldier, in his tall leather boots and with a tangling whip and truncheon, let down his guard. It was the end of their nighttime shift of terror. Irena sat on the lap of another young recruit, and she guessed that the boy wasn't more than eighteen or nineteen. They even seemed, she thought, to be dozing. Irena's face was calm but her mind was racing. There was so much to consider and so little time left to her. Janka knew exactly how important these lists were--and how dangerous. If the lists were discovered, it would set in motion a chain of executions. The Gestapo would hunt down the Jewish children. They would murder the Polish men and women who had agreed to care for them and hide them. Zofia and Stanisław. Władysława and Izabela. Maria Palester. Maria Kukulska. Jaga. And they would kill Irena's mother, even though the frail, bedridden woman could only guess at the extent of her daughter's shadowy activities. The Germans followed a strict policy of collective punishment. Entire families were shot for the transgressions of a single member. Irena couldn't help but feel that she had once again been a bad daughter. She had always been, she knew, more like her impetuously idealist father. If the lists were lost or Janka destroyed them as a safety measure, there was another agonizing dilemma. When Irena died, there would be no one to reconstruct them. Irena was the general in this citizens' army and the only one who knew the details recorded on them. She had promised mothers and fathers who went to Treblinka that she would tell their children who had loved them. When she was dead, there would be no one able to keep that promise. There was one other question, too, that shook her: Who would tell Adam Celnikier? Adam. Her Adam. Her husband, Mietek Sendler, was somewhere in a German prisoner-of-war camp, and it would take weeks or perhaps months for word of her execution to reach him. It would eventually if he was still living. But she and Mietek separated before the war, and it was Adam she loved--Adam, whom even now friends were hiding under a false name and new identity. One of Warsaw's few surviving Jews, Adam was among the hunted, and his life was in constant danger. The engine of the Gestapo sedan reverberated through the silent morning streets of Warsaw. With each turn, the soldiers roused slightly. Irena had to prepare herself now for what came next. She had to prepare herself to give away nothing, no matter what torture was inflicted. Too many lives depended on it. Irena had risked her life to keep the children hidden. Now she was more determined than ever to die with her secrets. What if she was not strong enough to do it? If the pain were great enough, would she even betray Adam in his secret hiding place? She wondered now what she could bear. When they broke her bones with cudgels and pipes in the days to come, that thought would haunt her. It was a cold morning, and fear was also chilling her. The car rolled now smoothly eastward along the broad avenue, picking up speed on the final stretch of her journey. Soon they would reach Aleja Szucha and her last destination. There they would strip and search and beat and question her. There would be threats and intimidation. There would be lashes and agony and cruel torments that were at that moment still unimaginable. Colder things were coming. Irena slipped her hands into her coat pockets to warm them for a few moments. Her heart froze the instant her fingers touched something light and thin and crisp. Cigarette paper. Irena suddenly remembered that there was one part of the list that she had forgotten. On it was an address. It would betray the life of someone she had meant to check in on that morning. It was there between her fingers. Excerpted from Irena's Children: The Extraordinary Story of the Woman Who Saved 2,500 Children from the Warsaw Ghetto by Tilar J. Mazzeo All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.