Synopsis
In Warsaw, Poland in 1939, IRENA and her pregnant Jewish friend RACHEL, childhood friends, walk along the street in the summertime. STEFAN runs out of a building, begging for help with his mother KRYSIA.
At home,both husbands are concerned that the women were late because of the impending war. Irena goes to the Municipal Social Welfare Department to help when an explosion kills the little girl she was attending to. Rachel gives birth on the street with bombs dropping overhead.
When the bombing stops, Irena visits Rachel and her Jewish baby boy. Meanwhile, Nazis are turning Warsaw into a prison for Jews.
Stefan tells his Mother he is joining the military. At the Judenrat offices,
Irena decides to hide Rachel, Izaak and her son behind a false wall in her apartment.
She lies to the authorities claiming the son ALBERT is hers while Rachel and her husband are deported in the ghetto.
Appalled by the conditions at the ghetto, especially in the clinic, Irena helps the children escape using potatoe sacs and suitcases.
She is arrested and tortured but finds a way to escape to return to the camp where she joins the resistance.
Stephen has a change of heart as well and decides to do the right thing by joining the resistance as well.
TITLE CARD at the end
Irena Sendler and her colleagues rescued some 2,500 children. It has been estimated that Irena personally saved about 400.
In 1965, Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial organization, named Irena Sendler as Righteous Among the Nations for her work saving Jewish children.
In 1991, she was made honorary citizen of Israel.
In 2003, Poland honored her with its Order of the White Eagle. In 2008, Sendler was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize and appeared on the Polish commemorative silver coin.
Sendler died on May 12, 2008, in Warsaw, Poland, at the age of 98.