Polish social worker Irena Sendler rescued thousands of children from Nazi death camps

Irena Sendler, born Irena Stanisława Krzyżanowska in 1910, was a Polish social worker who joined the underground resistance during the German occupation. Using counterfeit medical papers, she gained access to the Warsaw ghetto and began a clandestine operation to extract children, transporting them in suitcases, coffins and other concealments to safe homes and religious institutions. The resistance supplied her with forged identity papers to protect the children’s new identities.

In October 1943 the Gestapo discovered the operation, arrested Sendler, subjected her to severe torture, broke her legs, and sentenced her to death, yet she survived an execution attempt and was rescued by fellow resistants. Post-war, she dug up records of the children’s original families and sought to reunite them, though many parents had already been killed in the camps.