Irena's Children

by Tilar J. Mazzeo

  Dr. Witwicki, her old psychology professor at the University of Warsaw: Ibid.

  “Clutching the dolls in their little hands”: Irena Sendler, “Youth Associations of the Warsaw Ghetto.”

  That they were going to the freight yard and to their execution: “Irena Sendler Tells the Story of Janusz Korczak,” Gariwo/Gardens of the Righteous World-Wide Committee, (documentary/video interview with Irena Sendler), http://en.gariwo.net/pagina.php?id=9114.

  There under the hot sun, after the chaos and bruising gauntlet, the children and the doctor waited: Marek Edelman, “The Ghetto Fights,” in The Warsaw Ghetto: The 45th Anniversary of the Uprising, Interpress Publishers, 1987, 17–39; archived at www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/Holocaust/warsaw-uprising.html.

  I cannot leave the children, not even for a moment: Stanislaw Adler, In the Warsaw Ghetto.

  “I will never forget that sight,” said Nachum: “Janusz Korczak,” Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Warasw, www.diapozytyw.pl/en/site/ludzie/; “Janusz Korczak: A Polish Hero at the Jewish Museum,” Culture 24, December 7, 2006, www.culture24.org.uk/history-and-heritage/art41997. See also Władysław Bartoszweski, The Warsaw Ghetto.

  “Remembering that tragic procession of innocent children marching to their death”: “Irena Sendler Tells the Story of Janusz Korczak,” Gariwo.

  “Of all my most dramatic war-time experiences, including my ‘residence’ and torture in the Pawiak”: Janusz Korczak, “A Child’s Right to Respect.”

  “She was also waging a quiet and intense battle inside herself”: Irena Sendler, “Youth Associations of the Warsaw Ghetto.”

  Dozens of refugees were hiding in the empty animal cages: Ludwik Hirszfeld, The Story of One Life, (memoir), trans. Marta A. Balińska, Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2014, Kindle location 8897.

  “I give my child in your care, raise my child as if it was yours”: “Ala Gołąb [Golomb] Grynberg,” Warsaw Ghetto Database, Polish Center for Holocaust Research, http://warszawa.getto.pl/index.php?mod=view_record&rid=07051998094230000004&tid=osoby&lang=en.

  “She struggled between the instinct of a mother and that of a nurse”: Ludwik Hirszfeld, The Story of One Life, location 8897.

  When Adam’s aunt Dora was shot dead in Warsaw at the end of July: Dekret Bieruta database, www.kodekret.pl/Dekret-Bieruta.pdf.

  When word came that his eighteen-year-old cousin, Józefina: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Sąd Grodzki w Warszawie, Akta Zg.1946 (Sygn. 655),” 1946–56, RG Number RG-15.270M, Accession Number 2013.241, Archiwum Państwowe w Warszawie, http://collections.ushmm.org/findingaids/RG-15.270_01_fnd_pl.pdf.

  “hardly anyone bothered about the children”: Vladka Meed, On Both Sides of the Wall, trans. Steven Meed. Washington, DC: Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1999.

  “their mother, father, sister, friend”: Irena Sendler, “Youth Associations of the Warsaw Ghetto.”

  “It was a beautiful, warm day”: Ibid.

  “quiet, soothing, and full of kindness”: Ibid.

  “Very quickly, we realized that the only way to save the children was to get them out”: Ibid.

  CHAPTER 9: THE LAST MILE

  “They couldn’t imagine living without each other”: Yisrael Gutman, Ina Friedman, The Jews of Warsaw, 1939–1943: Ghetto, Underground, Revolt, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989, 218.

  “The trains, already leaving twice a day with 12,000 people each”: Władysław Bartoszweski, The Warsaw Ghetto. See also Abraham Lewin, A Cup of Tears: A Diary of the Warsaw Ghetto, ed. Antony Polonsky, Waukegan, IL: Fontana Press, 1990; see entries for July 1942.

  “Never before,” survivors remembered later, “had anyone been so inflexible”: Marek Edelman, “The Ghetto Fights.”

  “A communist,” said the Gestapo man: The Last Eyewitnesses, 111.

  “We witnessed terrible scenes”: Marilyn Turkovich, “Irena Sendler,” September 29, 2009, Charter for Compassion, http://voiceseducation.org/category/tag/irena-sendler. Includes extracts from interviews with Irena Sendler and some video content.

  What Katarzyna remembers today: Marcin Mierzejewski, “Sendler’s Children,” Warsaw Voice, September 25, 2003, www.warsawvoice.pl/WVpage/pages/article.php/3568/article; also personal interview source material.

  “in a very hot summer (1942)”: Marcin Mierzejewski, “Sendler’s Children,” Warsaw Voice, September 25, 2003, www.warsawvoice.pl/WVpage/pages/article.php/3568/article.

  These “emergency rooms”—Irena’s “protective readiness centers”: “The 72nd Anniversary of the Creation of the Council to Aid Jews,” Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw, December 3, 2014, www.jhi.pl/en/blog/2014-12-03-the-72nd-anniversary-of-the-creation-of-the-council-to-aid-jews.

  In Jadwiga’s apartment: Michalina Taglicht lived with the Piotrowski family, along with her five-year-old daughter Bronia in 1943. Bronia was later hidden in Jadwiga’s parents’ home, located some sixty-five miles outside of Warsaw in the town of Pionki, and Michelina was hidden in a safe house in Warsaw. Jan and his heavily pregnant wife Zofia Szelubski were also refugees at the home.

  The inspector there knew there were Jewish children there: Michał Głowiński, The Black Seasons.

  When Katarzyna’s false papers came: Alexandra Sližová, “Osudy zachráněných dětí Ireny Sendlerové,” master’s thesis, 2014, Masarykova University, http://is.muni.cz/th/383074/ff_b/BP-_Alexandra_Slizova.pdf.

  We must not acquiesce in the spiritual destruction of our children: Nahum Bogner, “The Convent Children,” 7.

  the Jewish envoy was almost certainly Dr. Adolf Berman: “Adolf Abraham Berman,” Yad Vashem, www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%205996.pdf.

  “Those are tough terms,” the doctor snapped: Nahum Bogner, “The Convent Children,” 7.

  Once or twice Henia was driven to wild risks: Alexandra Sližová, “Osudy zachráněných dětí Ireny Sendlerové.”

  CHAPTER 10: AGENTS OF THE RESISTANCE

  “Be quiet,” the strange man said to them: IPN TV, “Relacja Piotra Zettingera o Ucieczce z Warszawskiego Getta,” (video interview of Piotr Zettinger), www.youtube.com/watch?v=tY3WxXUiYzo.

  “To this day, I can see the look in his kind and wise eyes”: Sendler, “Youth Associations of the Warsaw Ghetto.”

  Piotr went home to Irena’s apartment: Anna Poray, 2004, “Wacław and Irena Szyszkowski,” Polish Righteous, www.savingjews.org/righteous/sv.htm.

  “They treated me,” Piotr says, “like their own child”: “The Woman Who Smuggled Children from the Ghetto,” Jewniverse, February 15, 2013, http://thejewniverse.com/2013/the-woman-who-smuggled-children-from-the-ghetto.

  Piotr disappeared into one of the Catholic orphanages in her network: “Poles Saving Jews: Irena Sendlerowa, Zofia Kossak, Sister Matylda Getter,” Mint of Poland, https://www.nbp.pl/en/banknoty/kolekcjonerskie/2009/2009_13___polacy_ratujacy_zydow_en.pdf.

  “I hid my fear,” she said, “in my pocket”: News clippings, undated, “Jaga Piotrowska” and “Stowarzszenie Dzieci Holocaustu w Polsce,” courtesy Association of “Children of the Holocaust” in Poland and Mirosława Pałaszewska. See also “50 Razy Kara Śmierci: Z Jadwigą Piotrowską,” May 11, 1986, ZIH archives, Materialy Zabrane w Latach, 1995–2003, sygn. S/353.

  “Where do you want me to drive to?”: Anna Mieszkowska, Irena Sendler, 82.

  “What was happening was as horrible as could be”: Janusz Korczak, “A Child’s Right to Respect.”

  Would Irena agree to act as a signpost for Jan Karski on his trip into the ghetto?: “Address by Irena Sendeler [sic],” Association of “Children of the Holocaust” in Poland, (interviews with Irena Sendler), www.dzieciholocaustu.org.pl/szab58.php?s=en_sendlerowa001_02.php.

  Underneath the foundations of the building at number 6, Muranowska Street: E. Thomas Wood and Stanisław M. Jankowski, Karski: How One Man Tried to Stop the Holocaust, New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1994; Stanisław Wygodzki, “Epitaph for Krysia Liebman,” Jewish Quarterly 16, vol. 1 (1968): 33.

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bsp; Doctors and nurses had tried to save their own elderly parents: Sharman Apt Russell, Hunger: An Unnatural History, New York: Basic Books, 2006.

  “To offer one’s cyanide to somebody else is a really heroic sacrifice”: Marek Edelman, “The Ghetto Fights.”

  Eighty-five percent of the original total ghetto population of 450,979: Jonas Turkow, Ala Gólomb Grynberg.

  Another 30,000: “Deportations to and from the Warsaw Ghetto,” Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005413.

  But by 1941 the underground had infiltrated the RGO: “Central Welfare Council, Poland,” Yad Vashem, www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%205913.pdf.

  She was hiding Jewish children in city orphanages: “K. Dargielowa,” Warsaw Ghetto Database, Polish Center for Holocaust Research, http://warszawa.getto.pl/index.php?mod=view_record&rid=20051997191448000001&tid=osoby&lang=en.

  Some of those children were the youngsters: Jonas Turkow, Ala Gólomb Grynberg.

  “Our feelings toward Jews have not changed”: Joanna B. Michlic, Poland’s Threatening Other: The Image of the Jew from 1880 to the Present, Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 2008, 170. “Protest” was originally circulated in Warsaw in 1942 in an underground pamphlet, with a print run of 5,000 copies. The anti-Semitic passages were almost immediately deleted that year, when the text was reprinted. On the history of those deletions, see also David Cesarani and Sarah Kavanaugh, Holocaust: Responses to the Persecution, 63. Due to those passages, the complete, unexpurgated text is somewhat difficult to obtain; the full material is reprinted in some Holocaust source books, for example, Sebastian Rejak and Elżbieta Frister, eds., Inferno of Choices: Poles and the Holocaust, Warsaw: Oficyna Wydawnicza “Rytm,” 2012, 34.

  By 1944 there would be at least three hundred thousand Home Army members: Teresa Prekerowa, Żegota: Commision d’aide aux Juifs, trans. Maria Apfelbaum. Monaco: Éditions du Rocher, 1999, 24.

  Aleksander Kamiński and Izabela were close wartime collaborators: Krzysztof Komorowski, Polityka i walka: Konspiracja zbrojna ruchu narodowego.

  CHAPTER 11: ŻEGOTA

  The Germans had cut off the funds to the social welfare office: Marek Halter, Stories of Deliverance: Speaking with Men and Women Who Rescued Jews from the Holocaust, Chicago and La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1997, 9–11; qtd. Mark Paul, “Wartime Rescue of Jews,” 61–62.

  The name on the bell read Eugenia Wasowska: “Życie Juliana Grobelnego,” October 3, 2007, http://grju93brpo.blogspot.ca/2007/10/ycie-juliana-grobelnego.html; see also Jerzy Korczak, Oswajanie Strachu, Źródło: Tygodnik Powszechny, 2007, extracts at http://www.projectinposterum.org/docs/zegota.htm.

  A man beckoned Irena to enter: Teresa Prekerowa, Żegota: Commission d’aide aux Juifs, Polacy Ratujący Żydów w Latach II Wojny Światowej, IPN (Instytut Pamięci Narodowej), Warsaw, 2005, http://ipn.gov.pl/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/55426/1-21712.pdf.

  “In the course of this unusual meeting”: Marcin Mierzejewski, “Sendler’s Children,” Warsaw Voice, September 25, 2003, www.warsawvoice.pl/WVpage/pages/article.php/3568/article.

  An extra pound of black-market butter: Teresa Prekerowa, Konspiracyjna Rada Pomocy Żydom w Warszawie, 1942–1945, Warsaw: PIW, 1982. Some chapters have been translated into English by the Polish-Jewish Heritage Foundation of Canada, www.polish-jewish-heritage.org/eng/teresa_preker_chapters1-2.htm.

  “In the fall of 1942, I took control of the Child Welfare Division”: Irena Sendler, “Youth Associations of the Warsaw Ghetto.”

  Some sixty thousand Jewish people were hiding on the Aryan side of the city: Teresa Prekerowa, Konspiracyjna Rada Pomocy Zydom w Warszawie.

  In the next ten months—from December 1942 to October 1943: Ibid.

  Irena’s apartment was always a last resort for the network: Ibid.

  “Vast sums passed through my hands”: Ibid.

  Now the couple’s teenage son Kryštof also joined an elite resistance scouting squad: Bohdan Hryniewicz, My Boyhood War: Warsaw: 1944, Stroud, UK: The History Press, 2015.

  More than twenty Jewish people passed through her apartment: Magdalena Grochowska, “Sendler’s List.”

  Irena herself had introduced him to the hideout in Świder: Irena Sendler, “O Pomocy Żydom,” Lewicowo.

  How dare you disturb the peace of a Polish Christian: Ibid.

  With all the subtle charm of youth, Jurek began to stare: Jerzy Korczak, Oswajanie Strachu, Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Muza, 2007.

  “Forget that you have something in common with the Jewish tribe”: Jerzy Korczak, Oswajanie Strachu.

  So was Roman Bazechesa: “Otwoccy Sprawiedliwi,” Gazeta Otwocka, July 2012, www.otwock.pl/gazeta/2012/sprawiedliwi.pdf.

  So Maria Kukulska’s apartment also became a regular meeting place: Ibid.

  In the old state mint at number 18, Markowska Street: Guide to Praga, “Building of the Mint,” www.warszawskapraga.pl/en/object_route.php?object_id=332.

  More often, when she thought she was being followed: Alanna Gomez, “Jan and Antonia Zabinski: The Zookeepers,” Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform, www.unmaskingchoice.ca/blog/2013/01/18/jan-and-antonia-zabinski-zookeepers.

  The doors to the couple’s white stucco bungalow were always open: Vanessa Gera, “New Exhibition at Warsaw Zoo Honors Polish Couple Who Saved Jews During World War II,” Haaretz, April 11, 2015, www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-features/1.651285.

  Adam was an energetic man who couldn’t sit still: Otwoccy Sprawiedliwi,” Gazeta Otwocka, July 2012, www.otwock.pl/gazeta/2012/sprawiedliwi.pdf.

  CHAPTER 12: TOWARD THE PRECIPICE

  so the quiet tapping that startled Irena: Accounts of this story vary from source to source. Irena Sendler suggests in one interview from the late 1960s that, while she was present for the event, it may have taken place at the home of one of her close conspirators. However, in deemphasizing her role in events, it is more likely that she was simply being both modest and protective of her neighbors during a period in which she herself was subject to considerable persecution. See Irena Sendler, “O Pomocy Żydom.”

  “For safety’s sake, I was the only person who kept and managed the files”: Ibid.

  “It’s clear she doesn’t sleep at night”: Ibid.

  “Jaga took care of me like her own daughter”: Halina Złotnicka [Goldsmith], “Czesc Tereska VI,” Jewish Calendar, Almanac 1990–1991, file s.138–146; news clipping, courtesy private archives of Mirosława Pałaszewska; personal correspondence.

  Irena was needed in the forest outside Otwock: “Życie Juliana Grobelnego.”

  Many in the ghetto by late autumn were also set on armed resistance: Journal of Emanuel Ringelblum, 28.

  Now everyone in the ghetto was looking for miraculously clever hiding places: Robert Rozett, “The Little-Known Uprising: Warsaw Ghetto, January,” Jerusalem Post, January 16, 2013, www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/The-little-known-uprising-Warsaw-Ghetto-January-1943.

  Janka checked Józef as best she could: “Odznaczenie za bohaterską postawę i niezwykłą odwagę,” Office of the President of Poland, March 16, 2009, www.prezydent.pl/archiwum-lecha-kaczynskiego/aktualnosci/rok-2009/art,48,61,odznaczenie-za-bohaterska-postawe-i-niezwykla-odwage.html.

  Adolf Berman’s account books showed that the same secret courier: “A List (No. VII) of Welfare Cases According to Caseload ‘Cell’ Heads,” registry number 24092", catalog 6210, Ghetto House Fighters’ Archive, database, www.infocenters.co.il/gfh/multimedia/FilesIdea/%D7%90%D7%95%D7%A1%20006210.pdf.

  “What is this,” he retorted indignantly: Irena Sendler, “O Pomocy Żydom.”

  “I don’t want to be here,” she whispered into his shoulder: Ibid.

  “I cannot recall exactly what I happened to be doing”: Qtd. in Michał Głowiński, The Black Seasons, 115.

  “My dear, this poster is in the ghetto”: The Last Eyewitnesses.

  “I know because I passed it one day in the ghetto with my parents”: Ibid.
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  Stefania was gunned down on the streets of the ghetto: “Zamordowani w różnych rejonach Warzawy,” Więźniowie Pawiaka [Victims of Pawiak in Warsaw], 1939–1944, www.stankiewicze.com/pawiak/warszawa4.htm.

  It was early on a beautiful May morning: Courtesy private archives of Mirosława Pałaszewska and courtesy archives of the Association of “Children of the Holocaust” in Poland.

  “That morning in our apartment,” she explained simply: Courtesy private archives of Mirosława Pałaszewska and courtesy archives of the Association of “Children of the Holocaust” in Poland.

  “I did it myself,” Jaga remembered: Courtesy private archives of Mirosława Pałaszewska; personal correspondence.

  The neighbors and their guests were shot dead at the crossroads: Teresa Prekerowa, Żegota: Commission d’aide aux Juifs; Israel Gutman, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2007, vol. 5 (Poland), pt. 2, 611–12.

  The parents of one Jewish child, Michał Głowiński: Alexandra Sližová, “Osudy zachráněných dětí Ireny Sendlerové.”

  “I constantly think that I have encountered a real miracle”: Michał Głowiński, Black Seasons.

  “a harrowing experience for the small heroes”: Ibid.

  CHAPTER 13: ALA RISING

  The Ferris wheel lifted young courting Polish couples: Imagery here drawn from Czesław Miłosz’s poem “Campo dei Fiori.”

  No one any longer doubted such rumors: “The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising,” Yad Vashem, www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/education/newsletter/30/warsaw_ghetto_uprising.asp.

  Adolf and Leon carried hand grenades and weapons: Władysław Bartoszewski, The Warsaw Ghetto.

  they used incendiary bottles to attack the German columns: Marek Edelman, “The Ghetto Fights.”

  “[We] blew up German tanks and German troops”: Ibid.

  carried hand grenades hidden “in their bloomers up to the last moment”: “The Warsaw Ghetto: Stroop’s Report on the Battles in the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt (May 16, 1943),” Jewish Virtual Library, www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/sswarsaw.html.