Irena Sendler

Irena Sendlerowa (née Krzyżanowska; 1910 – 2008) was a Polish social worker and humanitarian whose bravery saved thousands of innocent lives. Working for the Warsaw Social Welfare Department, Sendler obtained special permits as a nurse to enter the sealed Warsaw Ghetto under the pretext of checking for typhus outbreaks.

As head of the children's section of *Żegota* (the Polish Council to Aid Jews), Sendler, under the nom de guerre 'Jolanta', smuggled approximately 2,500 Jewish babies and children past Nazi guards—concealed in ambulances, tramways, potato sacks, and false coffins. She placed them with sympathetic Polish Catholic families, convents, and orphanages, meticulously recording their original Jewish names and new aliases on encoded slips of tissue paper buried in glass jars beneath an apple tree. Arrested and tortured by the Gestapo in 1943 with both legs broken, she refused to betray the children's identities, escaping execution through a Żegota bribe.