Film about Polish WWII hero at Council of Europe
PR dla Zagranicy
Paweł Kononczuk
28.01.2016 16:11
"The story of Irena Sendler" by Polish documentary film maker Andrzej Wolf has been shown at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg as part of events marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Irena Sendler, pictured in 2005. Photo: Mariusz Kubik/Wikimedia Commons (CC-BY-SA-3.0)
The film is based on exclusive interviews with Irena Sendler recorded during the last four years of her life.
Irena Sendler saved some 2,500 Jewish children from the Holocaust. She was the head of the Jewish Children’s Section of the ‘Żegota’ Polish Council to Aid Jews, which functioned within the structures of the underground Polish state during the German occupation of Poland in WWII.
As an employee of the Social Welfare Department in Warsaw, Sendler had a special permit to enter the Warsaw Ghetto to check for signs of typhus, thanks to which she was able to smuggle children out and place them in Christian families and convents.
In 1943, Sendler was arrested by the Gestapo, tortured and sentenced to death. ‘Żegota’ saved her by bribing a German guard prior to the planned execution.
Irena Sendler died in 2008, aged 98.
Her distinctions included the Righteous Among the Nations title from the Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem, the honorary citizenship of Israel and the Order of the White Eagle, Poland’s highest state distinction. (mk/pk)
Watch a Radio Poland interview with director Andrzej Wolf: