The 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising has renewed interest in many of the stories and incidents that occurred in Poland during the Second World War. Every time that it seems that there are no new stories to be told, another, previously unknown episode seems to come to light.

This was the case of the Irena Sendler story. Although Irena Sendler managed to save almost three times as many Jews as Oskar Schindler, the account of her activities was almost lost to history until a group of Kansas schoolgirls unearthed the events as part of their general research of the Holocaust and publicized the story.

Irena Sendler was a young social worker in Poland when the Nazis invaded. She immediately joined the Polish underground, the Zagota, and undertook daring rescues of fleeing Jews -- researchers estimate that she was involved in the escape of over 500 Jews during this period.

When the Nazis created the Warsaw Ghetto Sendler obtained false documents that identified her as a nurse, enabling her to enter the ghetto as a specialist in infectious diseases. Sendler brought food and medicines into the ghetto but as soon as she realized what the Nazis intended to do to the Jews, she began to play ways to save as many of the ghetto children as possible.

Sendler walked through the ghetto every day, speaking to parents and convincing them that, unless their children were removed from the ghetto, they had no chance of survival. In her own words she "talked the parents out of their children." Many of the children that Sendler rescued were already orphans when she found them and, each day, she would smuggle a new group of children out of the ghetto, sometimes by sedating them and carrying them out in a bag or a toolbox and other times by hiding them under her legs as she sat on a city tram. There were additional smuggling sites as well including through sewer pipes located under the city streets and via the old courthouse that was situated along the ghetto border.

Sendler documented each of the children that she rescued by writing their real name on tissue paper and sealing these names in jars that she buried in her garden. Sendler hoped against hope that she would be able to reunite the children with their families at the end of the war but if that proved to be impossible, to at least return them to their Jewish community.

Sendler was arrested and tortured by the Gestapo in 1943 but did not reveal any information about "her" children. She escaped from prison and spent the rest of the war in hiding.

Sendler's story was uncovered by a group of schoolgirls in 1999. Their discovery propelled them to create a project, Life in a Jar, which tells the story of Irena Sendler. The project together with the assistance of the Lowell Milken Center has developed into a website, a book and a play which is performed many times each year for audiences around the world.

------------------------------------------------------

Reach thousands of readers with your ad by advertising on Life in Israel

------------------------------------------------------