Karin Lofstrom

The Nazi guards never heard the baby crying inside her toolbox. If they had, 2,500 children would have died. In 1942, a 32-year-old Polish social worker named Irena Sendler walked into the Warsaw Ghetto carrying a simple toolbox. She had a permit to check for typhus outbreaks. The guards waved her through. Hidden beneath the wrenches and rags was a six-month-old baby. She walked past armed soldiers and handed the child to a Polish family waiting outside the walls. The next morning she walked back in and did it again. For three years Irena smuggled approximately 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto. She hid infants in toolboxes, sedated children and smuggled them in coffins, concealed them in ambulances under stretchers, and used sewer pipes. Every child received a new Polish name. Irena recorded everything—real names, new names, locations—on tissue paper sealed in glass jars and buried in a friend’s garden. By October 1943 the Gestapo caught her. They tortured her, broke both her legs and both her feet, and beat her unconscious. She gave them nothing. After months they sentenced her to death. The night before her execution, the underground bribed a guard. He led her out and recorded her as “executed.” She went immediately back to work and continued until the war ended. When the war ended she dug up the jars and spent months trying to reunite children with families. Most parents had died in the camps. For decades almost no one knew about her. Then in 1999 four teenage girls in Kansas found a brief mention of a woman who had saved 2,500 children. They researched and wrote a play. At age 89 Irena Sendler became famous. She was honored by Pope John Paul II and nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. She died in 2008 at age 98. One estimate suggests those 2,500 rescued children produced approximately 6,000 descendants. She was a social worker with a permit and a toolbox. She walked into hell every day for three years and walked out carrying children. The Nazis broke her legs. They couldn’t break her will.