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1910 – Irena born in Warsaw, Poland and raised in Otwock, Poland

1917 – School yard incident-Irena standing up for Jewish children

1918 – Father dies of typhus

1937 – Anti-semitic laws in Poland – college classroom incident

1938 – Kristallnacht

1939 – Poland has over 3 million Jews, the largest Jewish population in the world and 10% of the Polish population

1939 – World War II begins- German invasion of Poland from west on September 1, Russia invasion from the East on September 17

1939 – Irena makes false documents for Jewish families

1940 – October 16th– The Warsaw Ghetto is established

1942 – Spring – deportation to Treblinka starts for the Warsaw Ghetto

1942 – 2,500 children are saved and hidden

1942 – Irena becomes head of Zegota children’s division

1942 – Treblinka becomes the major death camp for the Warsaw Ghetto

1943- April – The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising begins – Irena smuggles guns

1943- Irena caught by the Gestapo

1943- After 8 weeks in Pawiak Prison, Irena is rescued

1945 – January 27- Auschwitz is liberated by Russian Red Army

1945 – War ends and communism takes over Poland

1946 – Poland’s Jewish population is under 200,000

1946 – Irena is blacklisted by communist government

1948 – First of ‘Irena’s children’ taken to Israel

1965 – Yad Vashem recognizes Irena as a Righteous Gentile and plants tree

1989 – Communism falls in Poland

1998 – U.H.S. students complete 40th diversity project

September 23,1999 – Girls in Uniontown, KS decide on Irena as a topic for National History Day

September 23, 1999 – Adam, Irena’s son, passes away in Poland.

1999 – Only one web site on net mentions Irena-she is unknown to the world

1999 – Life in a Jar play is written

2000 – Girls find Irena is still alive and start writing her

2000 – First national and regional press interviews of the girls

May-2001 – Students, parents Norm travel to Poland to see Irena

May-2001 – Story of Irena breaks on – AP, USAToday, CNN, BBC, etc.

May 2001 – Survivor calls students “rescuers of Irena’s story for the world.”

March 2002 – Irena Sendler Day in Kansas City

July 2002 – Students take 2nd trip to Poland – 24 primary interviews, including Irena

April 2003 – Students begin Irena Sendler and Life in a Jar web site

2003 – 3 of the 4 founders of project graduate from high school

2003 – Howard and Ro Jacobson begin scholarship program for Uniontown High School

2003 – Irena receives letter from Pope John Paul II

2003 – Irena is recognized by President of Poland

November 2004 – 150th presentation of LIAJ

Feb. 2005 – Irena’s 95th birthday

May  2005 – Students travel to Poland – 3rd trip- see Irena – much press and 3 Life in a Jar performances.

June 2005 – Irena Sendler Day in Warsaw

June 2005 – Life in a Jar presents to 200 child survivors in Zakopane, Poland.

August 2005 – Irena Sendler web site reaches 1.5 million hits

April 2006 – The 1st Irena Sendler Award is given in Warsaw

May 2006 – 200th presentation of Life in a Jar in New Bedford, Mass

January 2007 – Irena is nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

2007 –Mandatory Holocaust education in Polish schools.

August 2007 – Lowell Milken Center opens, with Irena exhibit

2007 – Irena does not receive the Nobel Peace Prize, but receives much acclaim.

April 2008 – Students visit Irena in Poland for the 5th trip and help present the 2nd annual Irena Sendler Award to a teacher in Poland.

May 12, 2008 – Irena passes on at age 98

May 12, 2008 – Megan Stewart Felt’s birthday (plays Irena)

September 2008 – Thousands of American schools work on Irena projects.

October 2008 – 250th presentation of Life in a Jar in Vermont

2008 – The Polish Embassy in Israel honors Irena with a stamp.

January 2009 – A musical score is written about Irena and presented in Israel.

April 2009 – Hallmark Hall of Fame- ‘The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler.’ Two Emmys.

2010 – The Life in a Jar presentation reaches 300 presentations

2010 – Poland’s Jewish population is 25,000, 5,000 less than the Jewish population of K.C.

August 2010 – Life in a Jar/the Irena Sendler Project comes out as a book.

2014 – 50 million hits on Irena Sendler website since students started site in

2015 – 3,000 media stories on Life in a Jar: The Irena Sendler Project

2016 – New Lowell Milken Center for Unsung Heroes opens with dynamic Irena Sendler exhibit

2017 – Life in a Jar/the Irena Sendler Projectis in top three of all 8,000 Holocaust books on amazon.com for 7th straight year

2017 – Poland 2017 – Trip to Poland to revisit Irena sites for 32 people. There were visits with child survivors (Bieta Ficowska included), the tree site, Warsaw Ghetto, Pawiak, grave of Irena, Rabbi Schudrich and many more.

2018 – Irena Sendler Year in Poland.

2018 – Mr. C. receives the Irena Sendler Award from Taube Foundation and Polish government.

2019 – The Lowell Milken Center published ‘Mommy, Who is Irena Sendler?’

2019- 375th performance of Life in a Jar, on the aircraft carrier Yorktown in Charleston Harbor

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Music written in remembrance of the Holocaust.

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Songs From The Holocaust | Played By Violinist Jewish Survivor Edward Polidi | USC Shoah Foundation

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Image of Irena working at her medical job.

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Irena Sendler was born as Irena Krzyżanowska on 15 February 1910 in Warsaw to Dr. Stanisław Krzyżanowski, a physician, and his wife, Janina. Her father died in February 1917 from typhus contracted while treating patients whom his colleagues refused to treat in fear of contracting the disease, among them many Jews.

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Book written about Irena Sendler.

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Anna Mieszkowska (Author), Witold Zbirohowski-Koscia (Translator), Alex Storozynski (Foreword) & 0 more

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Irena Sendler: Mother of the Children of the Holcaust

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Irena Sendler: Mother of the Children of the Holcaust [Anna Mieszkowska, Witold Zbirohowski-Koscia, Alex Storozynski] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Irena Sendler: Mother of the Children of the Holcaust

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Irena Sendler with her husband Stefan Zgrzembrski and their daughter Janina.

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Irena passed away at the age of 98 on May 12, 2008 in her home town.

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In 2003, Irena received the Order of the White Eagle, the highest Polish civil decoration.

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Irena Sendler and her network are estimated to have saved around 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto during the Holocaust. She and her colleagues used various methods, including disguised identity documents and connections with orphanages and convents, to smuggle the children out of the ghetto and into hiding.

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Portrait of Irena Sendler.

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Irena Sendler was born as Irena Krzyżanowska on 15 February 1910 in Warsaw to Dr. Stanisław Krzyżanowski.

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Prof. Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska receives 2016 Irena Sendler Memorial Award during the Jewish Culture Festival, Krakow

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Irena Sendler and the Kansas girls.

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The first produced film about Irena Sendler.

(air date: April 19, 2009)

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Irena married three times. Her first marriage to Mieczyslaw Sendler lasted for 13 years before they divorced in 1947. She then married a long-time friend, Stefan Zgrzembski, and had three children—daughter Janka and sons Adam and Andrzej (who unfortunately died during infancy).

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Irena Sendler buried lists of the names of rescued Jewish children in milk jars to document their identities and ensure they could be reunited with their families after the war. These lists, written on pieces of tissue paper, were hidden in jars and buried beneath an apple tree in a neighbor's backyard.

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A play they wrote and performed called Life in a Jar. It retold, in dramatic form, the emotional story of Sendler knocking on ghetto doors and asking Jewish parents to give up their children to save them. The title, Life in a Jar, refers to the lists Sendler buried.

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Irena Sendler's headstone located in Warsaw, Poland.

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Irena Sendler's funeral located at Warsaw, Poland.

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In October of 1943 Irena Sendler was arrested by the Gestapo and brought to Pawiak Prison where she was brutally tortured.

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Irena directed a children’s rescue group to smuggle Jewish children from the Ghetto. This group was part of an organised‘underground council called Zegota, set up to help Jews.

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An award Irena Sendler won at the Polish Cultural Institute in London.

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An image from, "Life In a Jar"

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Portrait of Żegota member Irena Sendler.

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On the supposed day of Irena Sendlers execution, members of Zegota were able to bribe members of the Gestapo police for long enough to rescue Irena before her death time.

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The second produced film about Irena Sendler.

(air date: May 1, 2011)

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A photo from Irena Sendler's biography.

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Irena Sendler saved an estimated amount of 2,500 Jewish children during the time of the Holocaust.

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A book made in honor of Irena Sendlers story.

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Irena and the Kansas girls from the film, "Life in a Jar"

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“I was raised to believe that the question of religion, nation, belonging to any race is of no importance – it’s a human being that matters!”

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“I was raised to believe that the question of religion, nation, belonging to any race is of no importance – it’s a human being that matters!”

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- Irena Sendler wrote

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The documentary film "Irena Sendler: In the Name of Their Mothers" aired on National PBS on May 1, 2011, which was also Holocaust Remembrance Day. It was shown multiple times between May 1 and June 1, 2011, reaching 3.2 million households. The movie is also available on DVD through

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Janina and Stanislaw Kryzanowski, Irena Sendlers parents.

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Irena Sendler was a brave and determined social activist.

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Inevitably, Irena was found out and arrested by the Gestapo. In October 1943, she was arrested and taken to the infamous Pawiak prison, where she was brutally tortured to make her reveal information. However, despite this treatment, Irena gave nothing away and she was condemned to death.

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Irena Sendler with her daughter Janina.

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Irena Sendler and Maria Proner in Yad Vashmen.

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The Statue of Irena Sendler

(it stands in the UK)

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From 1927, Sendler studied law for two years and then Polish literature at the University of Warsaw

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During the time Irena was going undercover to help rescue children, she went under the name, "Jolanta"

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Medic uniforms for women during the holocaust.

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‘Life in a Jar’ started as a National History Day project in September of 1999. Four students (Megan Stewart, Liz Cambers, Sabrina Coons and Jessica Shelton) began looking for information about Irena Sendler. Mr. Conard had given them a clipping he had found in a 1994 issue of U.S. News and World Report. The mention of Irena was in a story called “Other Schindlers.” Only 1 web site on the Internet mentioned Irena, it was not until the students visited Poland in 2001 that Irena’s story became known to the world. At last count there were over 750,000 web sites on the Internet mentioning Irena.

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Many nurses who did not necessarily support the Nazi regime still implemented its discriminatory and murderous policies through the course of their regular, daily work. Engaging with patients more frequently and directly than doctors, nurses were often the ones who actually applied the regime’s medical policies. Nurses played a central role in the regime’s so-called “euthanasia” program. Under the program, roughly 250,000 children and adults with mental and physical disabilities were murdered. They were killed by starvation, lethal injection, or gassing.

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In one of Irena’s first letters to the girls in the movie (Life In a Jar), she wrote, “My emotion is being shadowed by the fact that no one from the circle of my faithful coworkers, who constantly risked their lives, could live long enough to enjoy all the honors that now are falling upon me…. I can’t find the words to thank you, my dear girls…. Before the day you have written the play “Life in a Jar” — nobody in my own country and in the whole world cared about my person and my work during the war …”

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In Irena's statement to the Yad Vashem Institute, she wrote:

“The basis for providing social welfare was a background survey. The idea was to fake these surveys. So, we would write some random Polish surname and thus we got money or clothing.”

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Irena Sendlers meeting with a movement group in Warsaw.

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A tree planted in honor of Irena Sendler in 2012.

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On July 16, the House Foreign Affairs Committee approved a number of bills en bloc, by voice vote, including a resolution (H. Con. Res. 361) to commemorate Irena Sendler, a woman whose bravery saved the lives of thousands during the Holocaust and remembering her legacy of courage, selflessness, and hope.

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A novel inspired by Irene Sendlers.