1. Irena Sendler participated, with dozens of others, in smuggling Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto and then providing them with false identity documents and shelter with willing Polish families or in orphanages and other care facilities, including Catholic nun convents, saving those children from the Holocaust.
Irena Sendler was sentenced to death but narrowly escaped on the day of her scheduled execution, after Zegota bribed German officials to obtain her release.
In post-war communist Poland, Irena Sendler continued her social activism but pursued a government career.
Irena Sendler initially grew up in Otwock, a town about 15 miles southeast of Warsaw, where there was a Jewish community.
From 1927, Irena Sendler studied law for two years and then Polish literature at the University of Warsaw, interrupting her studies for several years from 1932 to 1937.
Irena Sendler opposed the ghetto benches system practiced in the 1930s at many Polish institutions of higher learning and defaced the "non-Jewish" identification on her grade card.
Irena Sendler reported having suffered from academic disciplinary measures because of her activities and reputation as a communist and philo-Semite.
Irena Sendler joined the Union of Polish Democratic Youth in 1928; during the war she became a member of the Polish Socialist Party.
Irena Sendler was repeatedly refused employment in the Warsaw school system because of negative recommendations issued by the university, which ascribed radically leftist views to her.
Irena Sendler became associated with social and educational units of the Free Polish University, where she met and was influenced by activists from the illegal Communist Party of Poland.
At Wszechnica Irena Sendler belonged to a group of social workers led by Professor Helena Radlinska; a dozen or more women from that circle would later engage in rescuing Jews.
From her social work on-site interviews Irena Sendler recalled many cases of extreme poverty that she encountered among the Jewish population of Warsaw.
Irena Sendler was employed in a legal counseling and social help clinic, the Section for Mother and Child Assistance at the Citizen Committee for Helping the Unemployed.
Irena Sendler published two pieces in 1934, both concerned with the situation of children born out of wedlock and their mothers.
Irena Sendler worked mostly in the field, crisscrossing Warsaw's impoverished neighborhoods, and her clients were helpless, socially disadvantaged women.
Irena Sendler was mobilized for war, captured as a soldier in September 1939 and remained in a German prisoner of war camp until 1945; they divorced in 1947.
Irena Sendler joined the Polish Socialists, a left-wing branch of the Polish Socialist Party.
Irena Sendler was known there by her conspiratorial pseudonym Klara and among her duties were searching for places to stay, issuing fake documents and being a liaison, guiding activists to clandestine meetings.
Turkow, who contacted Wanda Wyrobek and Irena Sendler to take out of the ghetto and arrange care for his daughter Margarita, wanted to prioritize children of the most "deserving" people.
In 1963, Irena Sendler specifically listed 29 people she worked with within the Zegota operation, adding that 15 more perished during the war.
Irena Sendler, then known by her nom de guerre Jolanta, took over the section from October 1943.
Irena Sendler wanted to preserve the children's Jewish identities, so she kept careful documentation listing their Christian names, given names, and current locations.
On 18 October 1943, Irena Sendler was arrested by the Gestapo.
Irena Sendler's life was saved because the German guards escorting her were bribed, and she was released on the way to the execution.
Irena Sendler was freed due to the efforts of Maria Palester, a fellow Welfare Department activist, who obtained the necessary funds from Zegota chief Julian Grobelny; she used her contacts and a teenage daughter to transfer the bribe money.
Permission was granted on 14 April 1944, but Irena Sendler found it prudent to remain in hiding, as Klara Dabrowska, a nurse.
Irena Sendler was wounded by a German deserter she encountered while searching for food.
Irena Sendler continued to work as a nurse until the Germans left Warsaw, retreating before the advancing Soviet troops.
Irena Sendler hitchhiked in military trucks to Lublin, to obtain funding from the communist government established there, and then helped Maria Palester to reorganize the hospital as the Warsaw's Children Home.
Irena Sendler resumed other social work activities and quickly advanced within the new structures, in December 1945 becoming head of the Department of Social Welfare in Warsaw's municipal government.
Irena Sendler ran her department according to concepts, radical at the time, that she had learned from Helena Radlinska at the Free University.
Berman and Irena Sendler both felt that the Jewish children should be reunited with "their nation", but argued vehemently about specific aims and methods; most children were taken out of Poland.
Irena Sendler joined the communist Polish Workers' Party in January 1947 and remained a member of its successor, the Polish United Workers' Party, until the party's dissolution in 1990.
Especially prior to 1950, Irena Sendler was heavily involved in Central Committee work and party activism, which included implementation of social rules and propagation of ideas dictated by the Stalinist doctrine, and policy enforcement; by engaging in such pursuits, she abandoned some of her previously held views and lost some important acquaintances.
Irena Sendler attributed the premature birth of her son Andrzej, who did not survive, to such persecution.
Irena Sendler's continuing employment in high-level state positions speaks against the possibility that she was a subject of serious investigation.
Materials dealing with her activities during the war were published, but Irena Sendler became a well-known public personality only after being "rediscovered" by the group from an American high school in 2000.
Irena Sendler was recognized by Yad Vashem as one of the Polish Righteous Among the Nations and received her award at the embassy of Israel in Warsaw in 1965, together with Irena Schultz.
From 1962, Irena Sendler worked as deputy director in several Warsaw trade medical schools.
Irena Sendler was known for her effectiveness and displayed a sharp edge when confronted with obstruction or indifference.
Irena Sendler was entirely consumed by her social work passion and career, at the expense of her own offspring, who were raised by a housekeeper.
Around 1956, Irena Sendler asked Teresa Korner, whom she had helped during the war and who was now in Israel, to assist her with immigration to Israel with children, who were Jewish and not safe in Poland.
Irena Sendler never told her children of the Jewish origin of their father; Janina Zgrzembska found out as an adult.
Irena Sendler lived in Warsaw for the remainder of her life.
Irena Sendler died on 12 May 2008, aged 98, and is buried in Warsaw's Powazki Cemetery.
In 1965, Irena Sendler was recognized by Yad Vashem as one of the Polish Righteous Among the Nations.
In 1991, Irena Sendler was made an honorary citizen of Israel.
Irena Sendler received a higher version of this award, the Commander's Cross with Star, on 7 November 2001.
Irena Sendler's achievements were largely unknown in North America until 1999, when students at a high school in Uniontown, Kansas, led by their teacher Norman Conard, produced a play based on their research into her life story, which they called Life in a Jar.
The play was adapted for television as The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler, directed by John Kent Harrison, in which Sendler was portrayed by actress Anna Paquin.
On 14 March 2007, Irena Sendler was honoured by the Senate of Poland, and a year later, on 30 July, by the United States Congress.
The number of Jewish children saved through Irena Sendler's efforts is not known.
The Social Welfare Department of the Central Committee of Polish Jews stated in January 1947 that Irena Sendler saved at least several dozen Jewish children.
Later in her life, Irena Sendler repeatedly claimed that she had saved 2,500 Jewish children.
Irena Sendler often spoke of the list of 2,500 children she produced, kept in two bottles and gave to Adolf Berman, but no such list has ever materialized and Berman never mentioned its existence.
Actual events tend to be difficult to reconstruct because later, purposely or inadvertently, for different audiences and at different times, Irena Sendler told different stories with aspects that were mutually incompatible or contrary to known facts.
For example, in 1998 Irena Sendler claimed that the communist authorities kept refusing to issue her passport for twenty years, despite the invitations from Yad Vashem she had been receiving during that period.
Previously Irena Sendler had a passport: on several occasions she went to Sweden to visit her son, who was receiving medical treatment there.