Irena Sendler the Unknown Holocaust Hero Just when we think that
there's nothing new to learn about the Holocaust, a new incident
comes to light to give us a new perspective. This is
particularly true regarding the story of Irena Sendler. Sendler
was a non-Jewish woman who was responsible for saving over 2500
Jewish children, yet her story was almost lost to history. Irena
Sendler was a young social worker when the war broke out in
Poland in 1939. She joined the "Zagota," the Polish underground
which was committed to assisting Jews. When the Warsaw ghetto
was established, Sendler succeeded in obtaining a pass that
allowed her, as a social worker, access into the ghetto. Sendler
quickly surmised that the Nazis intended to murder the Jews who
were living in the ghetto. She took it upon herself to begin
smuggling children out of the ghetto. Some of the children were
orphans but others still had living parents and Sendler "talked
the parents out of their children," as she later said,
convincing the parents that t