Irena Sendlerowa

Unstoppable!

By, Solveig

Good afternoon, everyone! A lot of very well-known people are here at the Biography Bistro including Ben Franklin, Helen Keller, and Gabby Douglas. My character is not as popular as all of them. But, I did discover MUCH more than meets the eye -- if you count saving 2,500 lives as something.

On February 15, 1910, a baby girl is born. Her name is Irena Krzyzanowska, that's me. When I was a young girl my father, a hard-working doctor, fell ill with typhus, which he had been treating in others. Before my father passed away, he told me, "Irena, if someone drowning, you must jump in and try to save them."

Now, I'm known as Irena Sendlerowa, or in some cases, Irena Sendler. I was married Mieczyslaw Sendlerowa, but, in 1931 (after the war) we got divorced. Soon, I married a fellow activist Stephen Zgrzembski and had two children, a son and daughter.

Now, we are going take a step back into the 1900's

It is a very dark, bad time in World War II. Many of these people around us are too afraid to be upstanders and choose to be bystanders instead. I have not been tricked into that one!

As the Jews are being persecuted by the Nazis in World War II, I am working on helping Jewish families and saving their children by giving them Christian names and having Christian families adopt them. I wrote their real names and their new names on slips of paper, put them in

marmalade jars, and buried them under a big tree in my friend's garden. After the war, I would reunite many children with their families. Sadly many did not.

The Warsaw Ghetto is a part of town built by Adolf Hitler's Nazis, If you don't know. They're herding 500,000 of the Polish Jews behind its walls to await liquidation. That's when I was able to smuggle 2,500 children out (if anyone was caught doing this they would be severely punished or killed, but I managed to escape!)

Sometimes the smaller children would cry when I took them from their families. So to cover up the noise, I trained a dog to bark. I have been able to hide the children in sacks, bags of clothes, boxes -- even in coffins! I saved them all in three months.

And now, I've became pretty famous! A movie and a play were made about me. The movie is titled "The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler," and the play is called "Life in a Jar." The play was written by a group of Kansas schoolgirls (Elizabeth Cambers, Megan Stewart, Sabrina Coons, and Janice Underwood), along with their teacher Norman Conard.

I lived a very fulfilled life that I hope will never be forgotten. Are you all ready to continue fighting for this cause?

Thank you all so much for listening, I hope you learned something new! Enjoy the Biography Bistro! If you would like to learn more here are my sources:

"What Is History's Heroes?" History's HEROES. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Apr. 2017.

Jewish Virtual Library. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Apr. 2017.

"The Definitive Internet Reference Source for Urban Legends, Folklore, Myths, Rumors, and Misinformation." Snopes.com. N.p., 23 Apr. 2017. Web. 24 Apr.

"The Courageous Story of Irena Sendler." Life in a Jar. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Apr. 2017

Cavallo, Francesca. "Irena Sendlerowa." Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls. By Elena Favilli. N.p.: n.p., n.d. N. pag. Print.
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Presentation Notes:

"Oh, hello! How are you all doing? I am so glad to be in Helena on this beautiful afternoon! I am a lady from Poland, as you may know, and I have come to tell you all about some issuesyou may not be aware of but should deeply consider.
I have had a big part in helping out in Warsaw, I actually have just arrived from helping an adorable young lady find her way back home. Now, I have done this many, many times considering I have saved 2,500 from the Ghetto. I am so very excited you are all interested in this cause as well and I can see you all doing fabulous things about it in the near future!"