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Irene Sendler, Polish Social Worker Helped Save Jewish Children from Holocaust, Dies at 98
Irene Sendler, a Polish social worker who helped save the lives of nearly 2,500 Jewish children during the Nazi’s reign in Germany, has died at the age of 98.
Sendler helped smuggle thousands of children out of the Warsaw Ghetto as the Nazi’s occupied Poland and were in the process of burning the ghetto and sending residents to concentration camps.
As a social worker in occupied Poland Sendler entered the ghettos and worked t provide new identities to Jewish children so that they would escape the hand of the Nazis. Children were smuggled out of their homes and placed in families, hospitals and orphanages and Sendler recorded each child’s name in hopes they would be reunited with their families one day.
Sendler was arrested in 1943 but an assistant managed to hide the slips of paper that bore evidence to her actions. More than 2,500 names had been recorded.
Following the war Sendler continued her work in the social welfare system and in 1963 she was honored for her efforts by the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.
Sendler had been living in a nursing home and was taken to a hospital last month after complications related to pneumonia. She died on Monday.
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