Irena Sendler (Irena Sendlerowa) was a Catholic social worker in Warsaw who, beginning in October 1940, entered the Warsaw Ghetto under the pretext of inspecting sanitary conditions. Over the next two years, she and a network of 20 collaborators smuggled approximately 2,500 Jewish children to safety — more children than Oskar Schindler saved.
She hid infants in ambulances, body bags, toolboxes, coffins. Older children were led through sewers, court buildings, any passage that offered a way out. She carried a list of every child's real name and their new Christian identity. When she feared discovery, she buried the lists in glass jars under her apple tree at 4 Lwowska Street. The jars contained the children's real names, new identities, and the addresses of sheltering families.
On October 20, 1943, Sendler was arrested by the Gestapo. She was tortured — her legs and feet were broken — but revealed nothing. Sentenced to death, members of the Polish underground organization Zegota bribed her guards, and she was released on the day of her execution, smuggled out in a laundry cart. Given a new identity, Krzysztofowa, she continued her work from hiding.
When the war ended, Sendler dug up the jars and began reuniting children who had been raised by Catholic families with surviving Jewish relatives. Many of the children did not know they were Jewish. In 2007, at age 97, she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. She died May 12, 2008, at age 98.