Instituto irena sendler biography

The war was the most difficult lesson for humanity, when for such elementary norms as compassion for victims, aid for the needy or respect – regardless of their origin, nationality, or creed – the dignity of the other person, there was not enough space. All the rules of coexistence were deformed, the hierarchy of values was definitively lost, and the order of the „old world” had fallen apart. The sense of fear that existed determined all behaviours and attitudes. People had to face choices between alternatives, each carrying a decision that exceeded the scope of feeling and imagination. Continuous disintegration and atomisation of the society led to a breakdown of pre-war bonds. All activities of the pauperised, poor, and humiliated population focused on survival, which resulted in the numbing of sensitivity to the external. The tragedy was made worse by indifference to the suffering of others. In a situation of constant, everyday danger, the vast majority of Po

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Knowledge Under Siege | Irena Sendler: In Hiding

Wednesday Mar 15, pm

This event is a part of YIVO's series Knowledge Under Siege, which presents recent scholarship from Poland about the Holocaust and antisemitism. Each event features scholars discussing a recent book they worked on.

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Anna Bikont, Sendlerowa. W ukryciu [Irena Sendler. In hiding] (Wołowiec: Czarne, ).

A social worker, Irena Sendler () belongs to the pantheon of Poland’s national heroes as a woman who saved Jewish children from the Holocaust. Numerous schools, streets, and squares bear her name. A national hero needs a biography to suit the nation, and that is how Sendler’s official biography was tailored. No historian has ever tried to verify the 2, figure. In fact, Sendler’s real biography does not produce the kind of hero for whom Poles erect monuments nowadays. Sendler is indeed a dazzling heroine. She would repeatedly sigh, “In occupied Warsaw it was much easier to find space in a living room for a huge

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Irena Stanisława Sendler, née Krzyżanowska, was born on 15 February in Warsaw.

 

Irena’s father, Stanisław Krzyżanowski, was a doctor. He worked at the Holy Spirit Hospital, and later ran a private practice in Otwock. He died of typhus in  In , Irena’s mother, Janina Krzyżanowska, moved with daughter to Tarczyn, and later to Piotrków Trybunalski, where Irena began her education at the Helena Trzcińska Gymnasium.

 

 

After her high school exams, she moved to Warsaw to study lag at the University of Warsaw, which she gave up after two years in favour of the Humanities Department. She began her teacher’s training at the „Różyczka” orphanage in Wawer – a subsidiary of Janusz Korczak’s House of Orphans. She graduated in June but didn’t apply for her MA exams.

 

Even though she began her work in social care, inom