Irena Sendler

It was 1940, in Warsaw, in occupied Poland.

On November 16, the Germans sealed the ghetto.

A social worker from the city obtained a pass. Officially, she came to inspect sanitary conditions. In truth, she came to help.

Her name was Irena Sendler.

She was born in Warsaw on February 15, 1910. She grew up in Otwock, where her father, Stanisław Krzyżanowski, was a doctor and ran a sanatorium.

She had studied at the University of Warsaw. Then she had joined the city's social welfare department.

From the start of the occupation, with a few colleagues, she filled out false welfare forms. The money and clothing they obtained went to Jewish families.

Inside the ghetto, she made contact with a Jewish welfare organization. Between 1940 and 1942, with others, she placed about a dozen Jewish infants on the Polish side.

On July 22, 1942, the liquidation of the ghetto began. About 280,000 Jews from Warsaw were deported to Treblinka.

In the autumn of 1942, an underground network was born: Żegota, the Council for Aid to Jews. Irena became one of its leading activists. In the underground, she was known as Jolanta.

In September 1943, she took charge of the section that cared for children.

They had to be hidden. In orphanages, like the Family of Mary orphanage in Warsaw. In convents. In schools, hospitals, families. Each child received a new name.

Irena recorded, in code, each child's real name and the place where they had been sent. So that their relatives could find them after the war.

How many children were saved? The figure of more than 2,500 has often been given. Yad Vashem notes that the exact number remains unknown.

On October 20, 1943, the Gestapo arrested her.

She had hidden the coded addresses of the children, and the money.

She was taken to Pawiak prison. She was tortured. She was sentenced to death.

Żegota did not abandon her. The network bribed officials. In February 1944, Irena was released.

She took a new identity, Klara Dąbrowska, and carried on her underground work. She could not attend her mother's funeral.

During the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, she worked as a nurse.

After the war, she kept working in social welfare. Two survivors lived with her for several years.

On October 19, 1965, Yad Vashem recognized her as Righteous Among the Nations. A tree was planted in her honour, at the entrance to the Avenue of the Righteous.

In 1983, on a visit to Israel, she herself planted an olive tree in the Garden of the Righteous.

Irena Sendler died in Warsaw on May 12, 2008. She was ninety-eight.

Her courage did not come from Ubuntu, but it echoes it: she risked her life for children who were not her own.

What remains is the image of lists of names, written in code, in a city at war. Names that others had wanted to erase, and that she kept.