Irena Sendler

Hello! My name is Irena Sendler. I was born a long time ago, on February 15th, 1910, in a city called Warsaw in Poland. My father was a doctor, and he taught me something very important: you should always help someone in need, no matter who they are or where they come from. He was the kindest person I knew. When I was just seven years old, my father got very sick helping others and he passed away. I never forgot his lesson, and I decided I would spend my life helping people, just like he did.

When I grew up, I became a social worker, which meant my job was to help families who needed food, warm clothes, or a safe place to live. But in 1939, a terrible war, World War II, came to my country. Soldiers took over our city, and they were very cruel to my Jewish friends and neighbors. They forced all the Jewish people to live in one small, crowded part of the city called the Warsaw Ghetto. Life there was very, very hard, and I knew I couldn't just stand by and watch.

I joined a secret group of friends who wanted to help. My job was to help the children. Because I was a social worker, I had a special pass that let me go into the ghetto. I knew the only way to save the children was to get them out. So, we came up with sneaky plans! We hid children in ambulances under blankets, in big toolboxes, and sometimes even in potato sacks. It was very scary, but we had to be brave. We found kind families outside the ghetto who would pretend the children were their own and keep them safe.

Every time I helped a child escape, I wrote down their real name and their new, secret name on a tiny piece of paper. I wanted to make sure that after the war, they would know who they really were and could find their families again. I put all these slips of paper into glass jars. Then, I buried the jars under a big apple tree in my friend's backyard to keep them hidden and safe. In 1943, the soldiers found out about my work and arrested me, but I never told them our secrets. My friends in the secret group helped me escape!

After the war ended in 1945, I dug up the jars and tried to reunite the children with their families. It was very sad because most of their parents were gone. For many years, not many people knew what my friends and I had done. But my story was eventually shared with the world. I lived to be 98 years old. People remember me for being brave and for believing that even in the darkest times, one person can bring a little light into the world just by being kind and helping others.