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Irena Sendler
Social Worker • Poland • 1910–2008
Smuggled approximately 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto -- more than Oskar Schindler saved.
Irena Sendler was a Catholic social worker who entered the Warsaw Ghetto to inspect sanitary conditions and used that access to smuggle children out. For two years, she and a network of 20 collaborators hid infants in ambulances, body bags, toolboxes, and coffins. Older children were led through sewers and passages. She buried lists of all the children's real names in glass jars under an apple tree. When arrested by the Gestapo, she was tortured -- her legs and feet broken -- but revealed nothing. She was smuggled out on the day of her scheduled execution.