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Summary and Analysis of Irena's Children: The Extraordinary Story of the Woman Who Saved 2,500 Children from the Warsaw Ghetto

Based on the Book by Tilar J. Mazzeo

OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA

Summary

Prologue

Author Tilar J. Mazzeo begins her story of Irena Sendler in the middle: with the Nazi's arrest of the young woman in 1943. It is a scene of enormous drama and tension, highlighting the terrifying consequences resistance work could bring. It also vividly demonstrates Irena's courage, the quick-thinking of all of those in her resistance group, and the extraordinary bravery of everyone involved. When the Gestapo agents burst into the Sendler apartment in the middle of the night, it was only a combination of luck and wiles that prevented them from discovering the Jews hiding there, or the lists of rescued children Irena had been keeping.

The chapter closes with Irena's arrival at Aleja Szucha, Gestapo headquarters in Warsaw, Poland, and her terrifying discovery that she still had one incriminating cigarette paper with an address on it in her possession.

Need to Know: Although this is a work of carefully researched nonfiction, Mazzeo uses a writing technique often employed in fiction and film: plunging the reader immediately into a moment of high drama. She establishes what's at stake for the individuals the reader will come to know, and so there is a sense of foreboding in the earlier, less intense periods of Irena Sendler's life — it's clear where things are heading.

Mazzeo uses this writing style for the entire book, creating a sense of immediacy for events that took place decades ago, and bringing historical characters vividly to life.

Chapter 1: Becoming Irena Sendler Otwock, 1910–1932

Otwock, the village southeast of Warsaw in Poland, was well known for its long established Hasidic Jewish community and for the world-renowned spa and clinic created by Dr. Józef Marian Geisler in the late 1800s to treat patients with tuberculosis. It was also the place where Irena Sendler, then Irena Stanislawa Krzyzanowska, grew up as the wealthy daughter of a compassionate Catholic doctor who treated many of the village's poor Jews when other physicians refused to do so. Her father's belief in helping anyone who needed it, regardless of race or religion, greatly influenced Irena, as did his membership in the Polish Socialist Party that advocated fair access to healthcare for all, an eight-hour workday, and the end to child labor.

Anti-Semitism was strong in Poland, but Irena's father did not embrace it. Many of her playmates were Jewish children and she was familiar with their Yiddish language and religious and cultural traditions. And although Irena's family was wealthy, she witnessed a great deal of poverty by accompanying her father when he made his rounds to see Jewish patients.

When a typhoid epidemic hit Otwock in 1916, Irena's father contracted it a year later and he died five before Irena's 7th birthday. His death left Irena and her mother, Janina, impoverished. However, the Jewish community did not forget how her father had opened his doors to them when no one else would, and they offered to pay for Irena's education. Her mother's pride would not allow her to accept, so they moved to Piotrków, a town not far from Warsaw. There, Irena met her future husband, Mietek Sendler, whom she would marry after attending the University of Warsaw, where she trained to be a social worker.

Need to Know: Irena's father had been such a vocal activist in his younger days that he was expelled from two different medical schools for leading strikes and protests. As Irena became more involved in the underground resistance efforts, she realized she was similar to her father in many ways, despite having lost him when she was quite young.

The town of Piotrków was a center for left-wing politics and nationalism. When Irena joined the Girl Scouts there, she and the other girls learned not only the usual songs and crafts but were also drilled in tactics for defending Poland from the potential invaders on their borders: the Russians and the Germans.

Irena developed misgivings about Mietek; she worried about giving up the freedom of single life, and about what she began to see as their philosophical differences. Despite her reservations, she married him when she was 21 years old, just before graduation. She felt it was her duty to keep her promise and also saw her marriage as a way to help her mother by no longer being a financial burden.

Chapter 2: Dr. Radlinska's Girls 1935–1940

Irena's determination to fight anti-Semitism was apparent during the riots at the University of Warsaw, triggered by the institution of the "bench ghetto": separate seating for the Jewish students. When Irena sat with the Jewish students in their segregated section, she was beaten by anti-Semitic gangs. But she didn't back down.

During her time at the University of Warsaw, Irena was accepted into an internship across town at the Polish Free University. It was there that she came under the influence of Dr. Helena Radlinska, founder of what was then a groundbreaking orphanage school, and running charitable clinics that provided classes for the unemployed and services for the impoverished. Dr. Radlinska was worshiped by many young students as a pioneer in the field of social work in Poland. One of the factors that perhaps bonded Irena so closely to her professor was that Helena Radlinska had known Irena's father — her ex-husband was a doctor who had worked with him. Helena was also one of the founding members with him of the Polish Socialist Party, an organization Irena also later joined.

Under Radlinska's tutelage, Irena blossomed intellectually and developed a sense of purpose in her life. She continued to protest anti-Semitism, scratching off the word "Aryan" from her campus identity card. Her actions ultimately led to her suspension from college. With Dr. Radlinska's help she found a full-time job with an organization helping unwed mothers.

Irena's husband, Mietek, pressed her to have children, but Irena was not interested. She preferred the company of her fellow university students — and especially Jewish law student Adam Celnikier — who, like her, were politically active and determined to fight against injustice. Irena grew bored in her marriage and the pace of ordinary life; when Mietek accepted a job in a town several hours away, Irena did not join him.

Then, on September 1, 1939, the Germans began air strikes on Warsaw. "Radlinska's girls" immediately went into action, strategizing plans to help those wounded and suffering in all the destruction.

Need to Know: Dr. Helena Radlinska, a Jewish professor who had converted to Catholicism, was a marked woman by the Nazis, and eventually went into hiding at a convent. But that did not stop her from counseling and directing Irena and her group of comrades in their efforts to save Jewish children from death at the hands of the Nazis.

Social work was a relatively new field in Poland, and the programs Radlinska and her colleagues developed became models for much of modern social work agencies and departments today.

Chapter 3: Those Walls of Shame Warsaw, 1941–1942

Poland surrendered to Hitler's forces on September 27, 1939. In 1940, the Nazis cordoned off a sixteen-block area of Warsaw and ordered all the Jews in the city to move there, separating them from the "Aryan" side. The area had been badly damaged in the bombings and prices for apartments there skyrocketed, as wealthy Jews jockeyed for better living conditions.

The section became known as the Warsaw ghetto. At first, many Jews thought they would actually be safer there, among fellow Jews and where the Germans and their anti-Semitic Polish neighbors wouldn't bother them. They had no idea they were going to be walled in, and that the restrictions would become untenable. Jews were given rations for a mere 180 to 300 calories a day to live on and were barred from receiving any social services or assistance. Dr. Radlinska suggested that Irena create a mirror social services network in order to provide Jews living behind the walls of the ghetto with medicine and food. What began as a small effort blossomed into a resistance cell that included hundreds of people from ten different offices and institutions.

This underground effort to ferry life-sustaining assistance to over 400,000 Jews living behind the wall required forging statistics, making up names, and creating fictitious families. They were able to thwart the Germans from checking up on them by adding reports about infectious diseases, such as typhus, tuberculosis, and cholera, taking advantage of the Germans' aversion to illness.

Once the Germans took control of Warsaw, they began a systematic effort to rid the world of Jews. They accomplished this in increments, first by closing synagogues and banning Jews from receiving social services, then by adding barbed wire and broken glass to the walls to keep ghetto residents from escaping, and shooting anyone who attempted to transport children out, including the children themselves. Preparations for "the final solution" had begun.

Using her position as a public health specialist, Irena obtained an epidemic control pass that enabled her to move in and out of the ghetto freely, allowing her to stay in contact with the resistance workers there and also to continue to see Adam Celnikier, who by now was her lover. She began to wear the Star of David that Jews were required to display, partly in solidarity, but also so that she and Adam could be seen in public together as a couple, as "interracial" dating was now illegal.

Need to Know: Prior to Germany invading Poland in 1939, plans were in the works in Berlin to make Poland the dumping ground of Jews and other "subhumans." The Warsaw ghetto was part of this plan to contain Jews, not only from Poland but from the other European countries that the Germans now occupied.

The Jewish quarter, as the ghetto was also known, was originally intended to house 80,000 residents. Over time, the numbers swelled to 400,000.

After three years of petitioning the university, Irena was able to resume her studies at the University of Warsaw.

Chapter 4: The Youth Circle Warsaw, 1940–1941

Irena and three friends from her university days, Irka Schultz, Jadwiga Deneka, and Jaga Piotrowska were in and out of the ghetto two or three times a day, trips made possible by a Polish doctor named Dr. Juliusz Majkowski who provided them with passes. He was part of a resistance cell, and was also in charge of Warsaw's Urban Sanitation Works division.

The women knew that people were starving in the ghetto, due to rationing, the astronomical prices of food, and the limited funds Jews were allowed under Nazi occupation. The Gestapo had also confiscated their bank accounts, belongings, and real estate. Daily life included surviving random shootings, and children dying from typhus. In addition to battling the Gestapo, residents also had to contend with "ghetto aristocrats": rich industrialists, police officers, profiteering smugglers, high-price prostitutes, and nightclub owners, who all profited from working with the Gestapo and turned on or in their fellow Jews.

These conditions led to the formation of a Jewish-run charity for orphans and a youth center run by Irena's friend Ewa Rechtman. Many of the young teens in the group volunteered to help aid the sick and administer the typhus vaccines that Irena and her friends had smuggled in. They also put on plays for the wealthier ghetto residents, donating the ticket revenues to purchase black-market food and medicine for the sick children.

Need to Know: Irena continued her studies, despite all the hardships, and led "youth circles"— the groups of teenage volunteers in the resistance movement.

In addition to much-needed supplies, Irena smuggled in children's dolls, made by her former professor, Dr. Witwicki. Later, when the Gestapo increased the numbers of Jews being sent to death camps, many of the children carried one of Dr. Witwicki's dolls with them.

Chapter 5: Calling Dr. Korczak Warsaw, January 1942

Irena and her core group of smugglers continued to expand their network, despite the increased risks to their personal safety. One controversial addition was Jan Dobraczynski, senior administrator of the Adult and Child Protective Care Unit, overseeing more than a dozen social services agencies. He was an ultraconservative Catholic who, while anti-Semitic himself, believed in working against the Nazis in order to secure Poland's independence, even if that meant saving Jews.

Irena didn't trust Jan, but she did trust her friend Jaga, who had recommended him. Jan's job with the welfare department was to oversee the placement of Christian orphans and street children. Irena, Jaga, and their network used his position to falsify documents in order to get Jewish children out of the ghetto to the Aryan side and into Polish orphanages. Sometimes this was as simple as replacing a Jewish child for a Christian one who had died but whose death had never been reported. Sometimes, the Jewish children found in roundups of Polish street children were on the Aryan side because they had risked their lives crossing over the ghetto walls on their own. If the Jewish children were boys, they were immediately taken into hiding by Irena and her network, since the Germans made the boys strip, as circumcision was a dead giveaway that the boy was Jewish. This was also a risk for Jewish boys placed in the orphanages because the Germans sometimes made unannounced inspections.

Unfortunately, when one of the roundups of street children produced thirty-two Jewish children, Jan Dobraczynski was not willing to take the risk of falsifying the immense amount of paperwork required for so many children. He told the German supervisor the truth, that there were Jewish children in the group. The agreement he made with the German supervisor saved the children from immediate execution, but required smuggling the thirty-two children back into the ghetto. Irena was furious.

Jan arranged for those children to go to a ghetto orphanage run by Dr. Janusz Korczak, a well-known educator and children's rights activist prior to the German invasion. Getting the children back into the ghetto was fraught with peril, since, if caught, the children would be shot by the Gestapo on the spot, as would those assisting them. Jan helped the children crawl through a breach in the wall, and Dr. Korczak arranged to have someone meet them on the other side. It was a successful endeavor, although it was a defeat for Irena. She vowed to never again allow children to go back into the ghetto, and she would never again let Jan in on her network's plans.

Need to Know: Starvation wasn't reserved for ghetto children. After the Nazi occupation in Warsaw, the number of abandoned and orphaned children in the city doubled.

Irena's network began using code names, and she chose the name "Jolanta." They also became more inventive in their attempts to fake paperwork necessary to get more children out of the ghetto and protect Jewish children living on the streets on Warsaw's Aryan side. This included obtaining blank or forged birth certificates. They also hid children in their own homes or with foster families willing to take the potentially deadly risk.

Chapter 6: Ghetto Juggernaut Warsaw, 1941–1942

As life became increasingly desperate for those trapped behind the ghetto wall, Jewish street children and smugglers began crawling through sewer canals in order to reach food and freedom on the Aryan side. Often, if they succeeded in reaching the other side, they faced the challenges of dealing with those waiting to prey on or take advantage of their situation. Many of the children were also sick. Irena and her group tried to intercede, cleaning the children up and bringing them to an orphanage run by a priest, Father Boduen.

As conditions in the ghetto deteriorated, Irena and those working with her began to put together paperwork that Jews escaping to the Aryan side would need. During this time, Irena tried to convince her friends living in the ghetto to use some of the documents themselves and go into hiding, but they were unwilling to put her or other people in danger by hiding in their homes on the Aryan side. Adam Celnikier was one of those who refused to leave, which frustrated Irena, but he felt he could not abandon his mother, wife, and other family members. He also did not want to leave the children at the youth center. The situation was taking a deep toll on their relationship and she wondered if their love could survive.

Irena and her friends were determined that no Jewish street child would ever again be returned to the ghetto as those thirty-two children had been. They estimated that out of 4,000 children living on the streets on the Aryan side, 2,000 of them were Jewish. Some of these Jewish children were orphans, but many were there as a result of their parents sending them over the wall. For those who were orphaned inside the ghetto, life was even more bleak, so Adam and Irena falsified medical records to allow orphans to be taken to a hospital on the Aryan side. They began to collaborate with Wladka Marynowska, a social worker at Father Boduen's Catholic Orphanage who found foster families willing to take in Jewish children with fake identities.

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Excerpted from Summary and Analysis of Irena's Children: The Extraordinary Story of the Woman Who Saved 2,500 Children from the Warsaw Ghetto by Worth Books. Copyright © 2017 Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
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