The characters Josef Bliss, Eliasz Abramovicz, Katrine, and Sofia “Marta” Bachmann in White Picket Fences are fictional, but the Warsaw Ghetto, the carnage at Treblinka, and the smuggling of little ones out of the ghetto during World War II are historical events. One of the most well-known rescuers was Irena Sendler, a Catholic social worker who risked her life to save more than two thousand Jewish children during the Holocaust.
Irena was twenty-nine years old when the Germans invaded Poland and forced Polish Jews into a barbed-wire enclave known as the Warsaw Ghetto. Along with many other sympathizers, Irena took on an underground name, Jolanta, and joined an underground operation called Zegota to offer aid to the displaced and starving Jews. As the horrors of the ghetto heightened, Sendler and a small band of associates began whisking Jewish children away to safety. Sometimes they would use hidden compartments in ambulances. Sometimes the children were placed in coffins or gunny sacks. Sometimes they used a labyrinth of underground tunnels and basements. Sometimes they used forged documents and used the city’s tram, if the tram operator for that day was a Zegota member.
Once outside the ghetto, the Jewish children were taken to Catholic homes and taught the Polish language so they could pass as Gentile Poles. Many priests and monks provided false baptismal certificates so that Jewish children could pass as Catholic born.
On the evening of October 20, 1943, informed Nazis came to Irena’s apartment and began to bang on the door. A quick-thinking Irena passed the lists of locations of all the rescued children to a friend who was in the apartment with her. The friend hid the lists in her underwear as the Nazis broke through the door. The soldiers searched the apartment for several hours, looking for the names and locations of the estimated two thousand Jewish children that had been spirited away from the ghetto. They never found them.*
Irena was arrested, beaten, sent to Pawiak prison, and given the death sentence. A bribe from members of Zegota to her German captors allowed for her release, and she remained in hiding until after the war. The index of names was buried in jars under a tree until the war ended, though sadly, most of these children were not reunited with their parents because the vast majority of them had died during the war. In 2003 Ms. Sendler received the Jan Karski Award for valor and courage. She was also nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. She died in 2008 at the age of ninety-eight. You can read more about her at www.irenasendler.org.
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* Richard C. Lukas, “Irena Sendler: World War II’s Polish Angel,” St. Anthony Messenger, vol. 116, no. 3, August 2008.