The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler

IRENA SENDLER, a Polish social worker

EVA ROZENFELD, Sendler’s friend

KAROLYNA, age 7, Rozenfeld’s daughter

JANINA, Sendler’s mother

DR. JANUSZ KORCZAK (YAH-noosh KOR-chak), a Jewish professor and author who runs an orphanage in the Warsaw Ghetto

STEFAN KAMINSKI, a Jewish man who works at the orphanage

*GESTAPO AGENT 1, Nazi Police

*GESTAPO AGENT 2, Nazi Police

*LIEUTENANT BRANDT, a Nazi official

*NAZI OFFICER

*GERMAN GUARD

NARRATORS A-E

* Indicates a fictional or composite character. All others were real people.

NARRATOR A: In 1939, German dictator Adolf Hitler invaded Poland, triggering World War II (1939-1945). After centuries of coexistence among Jews and Christians in Poland, Hitler and his Nazi regime began to isolate and then exterminate the Jews. In Warsaw, Poland’s capital, Nazi leaders forced Jews into a ghetto, which they walled off. There, food shortages, disease, and violence were common. Anyone who tried to help Jews faced torture and death. Yet some non-Jews risked their lives by refusing to stand by while innocent people were being slaughtered. Irena Sendler was one of them.

NARRATOR E: Sendler goes to a Jewish orphanage run by her friend Janusz Korczak. She learns that about 80,000 Jewish children live in the ghetto.

DR. JANUSZ KORCZAK: Even if you found a way to get them out, most of the kids in my orphanage couldn’t survive on their own.

SENDLER: Couldn’t non-Jewish families adopt a child as one of their own?

KORCZAK: None of them could pass for Poles. Most of these kids speak only Yiddish. [A girl tugs on his sleeve.] And look at this child’s dark curls. Who would believe that a Pole with straight blond hair is her mother or aunt?

NARRATOR A: Korczak goes off to play with the children. Meanwhile, an old friend of Irena approaches.

SENDLER: Stefan! You look well.

STEFAN KAMINSKI: I’ve found something worthwhile here, working with Janusz and the children. Not just smuggling potatoes into the ghetto.

SENDLER: You can do that?

KAMINSKI: Oh yes. I know a few things about getting in and out of the ghetto that the guards don’t.

SENDLER: Could you show me?

NARRATOR B: Kaminski shows her different ways to get into and out of the ghetto from the non-Jewish side of Warsaw.

NARRATOR E: Rozenfeld finally agrees to let Sendler take Karolyna into hiding. As the two walk down the street, German transport trucks appear. Jews rush away in search of a place to hide. Sendler and Karolyna escape by way of a secret passageway through a sewer.

KAROLYNA: Do you come here a lot, Miss Irena?

SENDLER: Well, not exactly.

KAROLYNA: But you’ve done this before, right?

SENDLER: I learn as I go along.

NARRATOR A: Climbing out of the sewer through a manhole, Sendler and the girl make their way to a truck. Sendler rides with Karolyna to a home for children in the countryside. Once there . . .

KAROLYNA: Please don’t leave me!

SENDLER: Someday, this war will be over, and I will find you. I promise.

NARRATOR B: As Sendler leaves, she looks back. Several children are welcoming Karolyna into the group.

NARRATOR C: One evening in 1943, Sendler’s Jewish friend Stefan Kaminski is visiting. Suddenly, there is a loud knock at her door. He hides.

GESTAPO AGENT 1: Irena Sendler?

SENDLER: I am.

GESTAPO AGENT 2: Come with us.

NARRATOR D: At Nazi head­quarters, Sendler is bound and taken to an interrogation room. Her shoes and stockings are removed. Then a Nazi official enters with an assistant.

LIEUTENANT BRANDT: Good evening, Miss Sendler.

SENDLER: What do you want with me?

BRANDT: Who are you working with?

SENDLER: I don’t know what you’re talking about.

NARRATOR E: Brandt’s assistant strikes Sendler’s bare feet with a wooden baton. She screams in pain.

BRANDT: If you give us names, you will not be executed. We know what you have been up to.

SENDLER: You’re wasting your time.

NARRATOR A: The assistant strikes again, and Sendler passes out. Two guards drag her down the hall and throw her into a cell.

NARRATOR B: After a few days, a stranger slips Sendler a note with an address on it. Soon afterward, an officer opens the cell door.

NAZI OFFICER: Everyone out! Out!

NARRATOR C: The guards force the prisoners, including Sendler, into a truck. After a while, the truck stops. Guards push the prisoners out and toward a group of soldiers. Suddenly, one guard grabs Sendler’s arm and pulls her away from the others.

SENDLER: What’s happening? Where are you taking me?

NARRATOR D: The guard drags Sendler out of sight behind a wall. Then he lets go of her.

GERMAN GUARD: Go! Go! Run away!

NARRATOR E: She does. As Sendler runs, she hears gunshots behind her. The other prisoners have been killed. She stumbles over smashed bricks, running to the address on the note. A friend meets her there and takes her into hiding. She finds Stefan waiting for her. The woman who saved so many lives has herself been saved.

NARRATOR A: The Holocaust continued for two years after Sendler’s escape. By the time it and World War II ended, the Nazis had killed more than 6 million Jews. If not for the quiet courage of people like Irena Sendler—Jews and non-Jews alike—the death toll would have been much higher.

NARRATOR B: Sendler managed to save some 2,500 Jewish children from being sent to Nazi death camps. In 1965, she became one of the first Gentiles (non-Jews) to be honored by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial and research center in Israel, as “Righteous Among the Nations.” She died in 2008 at age 98. 

NOTE: Adapted from the Hallmark Hall of Fame screenplay by John Kent Harrison, based on the book Irena Sendler: Mother of the Children of the Holocaust by Anna Mieszkowska.