Irene Sendler, Polish social worker and one of the ‘Righteous Among the Nations’ named at Yad Vashem. Sendler was a member of the Warsaw Underground during Nazi occupation, and headed the department of Zegota (the Polish Council to Aid Jews) which aimed to provide assistance to children. She managed to smuggle Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto to safe-houses, thanks to a network of helpers, chiefly women. Despite imprisonment and torture by the Gestapo, she revealed nothing. Sendler was sentenced to death, but after Zegota successfully bribed the occupation forces, she was released while being marched toward her firing squad. She continued her social work after the war, and died in Warsaw in 2008, at the age of 98.

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