Biography Irina Sandler

Irena Sendler. Source: Wikipedia. We publish her story about how the name of Polka, who saved hundreds of children from the ghetto, became a legend for the whole world. Famous people usually have two lives. The first is closed in a biological life cycle from birth to death. The second lasts much longer, covers the history of the vicissitudes of memory and oblivion, and often radical changes in traditional assessments.

A famous person stands on a pedestal, but almost everyone sees him in a different light. Over time, it becomes a symbol: devotion to the Fatherland, patriotism, sacrifice of facts from biographies lose their meaning. He begins to live in legend. I quote these words of the historian Yanush Tazbra from memory, but I think they perfectly explain the worldwide popularity of the legend of Irene Sendler.

Her heroes are people with a bright personality. And it is also important whether they left the work of life behind. All this gives legend the strength and power of influence on others. What enriches the legend, strengthens its existence? Sometimes - gossip, scandals, gross violation of decency, a certain thoroughly hidden secret of personal life. But the most important thing is admiration, recognition of actions.

It happens that the hero himself during his lifetime consciously or unconsciously participates in the creation of his legend. It forms it, according to its own plan. He becomes the author and the hero of his own story. So it was with Irena Sendler. They spoke about her not only in the world, but also in Poland thanks to four American girls from Uniontown, fascinated by the history of the Holocaust.

In the year, they wrote for the school Olympiad on history the play “Life in a Glass Bank” about a brave polka, which saved from the death of children from the ghetto.

The word "saved", picked up by the media, became a symbol, myth, a legend. Many misunderstandings are associated with it. Pani Irena corrected each time: "Remember, I would have done nothing alone." I am trying to convey and fix another definition of what brought the glory of Mrs. Irene. I will say this: Irena Sendler participated in the salvation of many Jews from the Warsaw ghetto.

Mostly children, but adults were saved with its participation. Ten people constantly worked with her. And everyone has their own assistants and a network of contacts. It was a large group, mainly women, Irena Sentler is the youngest. I wrote four books about a woman called the mother of the Holocaust children. We met when Mrs. Irene was 93 years old. I have been next to her for the last five years of her life.

She saw her sadness when she talked about current political events in the country and the world. She saw how she was moved by a report on the visit of the Pope Benedict XVI to the former Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz. I saw how she was happy when she was visited by children, adolescents and adults - literally from all over the world. I saw how happy she was when people from the Holocaust Children society came to her nursing home in the Warsaw new city.

She rarely agreed to meet with reporters. But calmly and patiently answered her difficult questions: was she afraid of during the war; how she managed to overcome fear; Did she lose her faith in people after what she saw on the streets of the Warsaw ghetto? I met a person who received a tragic life experience, for which the war did not end. For her, questions about the events of the occupation period, about visits to the Warsaw ghetto, about the post -war years were painful.

She did not want to return to the experience. But she returned, because the people who came to her, who endlessly asked the same questions, were waiting for this: “Pani Irena, how did you save these children? To get rid of obsessive journalists, Irena Sendler prepared a brief description of her activities during the war. When I first came to Mrs. Irene, it was supposed to write only one article.

And she agreed to the book. Joint book. The first edition of the year is “the mother of children of the Holocaust. The story of Irena Sendler. " This book was published in ten countries. I am indicated in it as an author-compiler. Because the book was created on the basis of the materials that my heroine shared with me. And only the next editions of the year, “Children of Irene Sendler” and the year, “The true story of Irene Sendler”, as well as the “History of Irene Sendler”, I signed as the author.

Three publications of the book that published after the death of Mrs. Irena, I am corrected and supplemented by new materials. The most valuable of them - in the penultimate and last editions - I think the chapter, including my conversation with Yanina Zgzhembskaya, daughter of Mrs. Irene. Mural depicting Irene Sendler, Tseshin, Poland. She was born on February 15 in Warsaw.

But the first years of childhood she spent in Lastsk. In the town near Warsaw, a well -known local resort. The climate in the vicinity of Lastska was considered favorable for patients with tuberculosis, and there were many of them in those days. Irena’s father - Stanislav Kshizhanovsky -, a doctor and a public figure, who often treated the most sick and poor for free.

His poorest patients were Jews. Irena played with Jewish children with a little girl and even learned to understand Yiddish.She was seven years old when her father became infected with one of the patients with a rash typhus and died. Until the last days of her long life, Irena said that her father instilled in her two principles that formed her as a person. The first: "To everyone who sinks, you need to reach out." And the second that “race, nationality, religion does not matter.

It is only important what kind of person it is. ” Pani Irena repeated these simple words to everyone who came to visit her. Before the war, she studied jurisprudence and Polish philology, but did not finish her studies. The defense of the finished thesis did not take place due to the war. Even earlier, in G., the number of duties of Mrs. Irena included communication with the poorest inhabitants of the capital.

She conducted interviews, organized assistance to needing families. During the Second World War, this experience helped Irene Sendler to create a network of loyal associates. It was Sendler who organized the constant passes to the Warsaw ghetto to her and several most brave friends. She came up with ways to take Jewish children from the ghetto. Many people took part in the action.

First of all, the Polish families with whom Irena agreed that they will shelter girls and boys for a short while. Jewish children taught Polish prayers, poems, songs and waited for the metrics of the dead Polish children, sympathetic priests helped this. Only after receiving the documents of the rescued, it was possible to transfer to other places, for example, to shelters at monasteries or to families who would like to take care of them for a longer time.

Irena and her associates saved children of different ages. From infants, the best example is the story of the Elzhbeta of Fitovskaya, born in the ghetto in January of the year before adolescents who most often left the ghetto with adults in labor brigades. It was not easy to remove very young children from the ghetto - through the sewer or in special tunnels connecting neighboring apartment buildings.

And the most difficult task was the salvation of the boys. Irena Sendler said that all wars someday ending. And I thought about what would happen to the rescued children in the future. She knew the Jewish environment very well and understood the need to "save a life for a future life." In order for the community to be reborn after the war, it is necessary to know the whereabouts of the rescued children.

So that they can return to Jewish families if their relatives survive the war, or at least just in the Jewish Wednesday. Hence the idea to write down the names of children: old and new ones - in t. It was a long list of Irena and her friends. The list that Mrs. Irena was always stored in her apartment thin strips of cigarette paper, folded in a jar standing on the table, up to her arrest of the Gestapo in October of the year.

Sendler was released for a bribe thanks to the efforts of the activists of the inhuman, and the list of a happy coincidence did not fall into the hands of the Germans. The legend says that two bottles with the names of the rescued children were buried under the apple tree in the garden of Jadwigi Petrovskaya on a medicine street, 9 and removed after the end of the war.

Using the Jewish organizations reprinted on the list, the Jewish organizations were able to start the search for children saved from death.