Adams Morgan in Northwest Washington in Washington, District of Columbia — The American Northeast (Mid-Atlantic)
Irena Sendler
Outstanding Polish Women
— #IamPolka —
Photographed By Devry Becker Jones (CC0), June 20, 2022
A social activist, recognized by Yad Vashem as one of the Righteous Among the Nations, who during World War II saved approximately 2,500 Jewish children.
She was born in 1910 in Warsaw. As a little girl she learned the Yiddish language while spending time in the company of Jewish patients at her father's tuberculosis sanitarium. It was her father who instilled in Irena that 'if you see a person drowning you must jump in the water to save them'. This precept guided her for the rest of her life. She studied Polish Literature at the University of Warsaw. Before the war, she started working at the city of Warsaw's Social Welfare Department, where she got to know the problems of single mothers, the unemployed, and the homeless.
She married Andrzej Sendler, who was captured by the Germans during the September 1939 campaign and remained in a POW camp until the end of the war. During World War II, in 1940, when the Jewish ghetto was established in German-occupied Warsaw, Irena became involved in helping Jewish families save their children. She managed to obtain for herself and her friend employee identity cards as sanitation workers fighting infection diseases, which gained them access to the closed ghetto district. She supplied Jewish children with new Polish identities and smuggled them into Polish shelters and families. These family partings were emotionally painful with no guarantee that they would end well. The children were packed in boxes and bags and driven out of the ghetto in municipal Sanitary Company ambulances; infants were drugged so they would sleep. The many ways children were smuggled out included hiding them in trams or fire trucks that passed through the ghetto or using underground tunnels knocked through the basement walls of houses next to buildings on the 'Aryan' side.
Irena Sendler and her colleagues also helped adults escape from the ghetto. IN 1943, she became one of the main activists of the children's section of the Council for Aid to Jews (Żegota) - a Polish humanitarian underground organization that was an official organ of the Polish government in exile. In the same year, she was arrested by the Gestapo, but Żegota managed to free her.
She wrote down all the new and original names of the children she rescued on sheets of paper, which she rolled up and hid, among other places, in jars buried in a garden. It is estimated that she saved 2,500 Jewish children.
In 1965, Irena Sendler was awarded the medal of Righteous Among the Nationas. She was also nominated twice for the Nobel Peace Prize.
She died in 2008.
Erected by Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Washington,
Photographed By Devry Becker Jones (CC0), June 20, 2022
Topics. This historical marker is listed in these topic lists: Churches & Religion • Science & Medicine • War, World II • Women. A significant historical month for this entry is September 1939.
Location. 38° 55.472′ N, 77° 2.198′ W. Marker is in Northwest Washington in Washington, District of Columbia. It is in Adams Morgan. Marker is on 16th Street Northwest. Touch for map. Marker is at or near this postal address: 2640 16th St NW, Washington DC 20009, United States of America. Touch for directions.
Other nearby markers. At least 8 other markers are within walking distance of this marker. Polish Suffragists (here, next to this marker); Maria Siemionow (here, next to this marker); Anna Walentynowicz (here, next to this marker); Maria Skłodowska-Curie (here, next to this marker); Olga Boznańska (here, next to this marker); Krystyna Chojnowska-Liskiewicz (here, next to this marker); Olga Tokarczuk (here, next to this marker); Wanda Rutkiewicz (here, next to this marker). Touch for a list and map of all markers in Northwest Washington.
Additional keywords. Holocaust; Polish resistance
Credits. This page was last revised on January 30, 2023. It was originally submitted on June 20, 2022, by Devry Becker Jones of Washington, District of Columbia. This page has been viewed 112 times since then and 14 times this year. Photos: 1, 2. submitted on June 20, 2022, by Devry Becker Jones of Washington, District of Columbia.