Dead at 98: Heroic Irena Sendler, who helped save 2,500 Jewish children from the Nazis
A woman who risked her life saving 2,500 Jewish children from the gas chambers died yesterday aged 98.
Irena Sendler, a social worker, smuggled them out of the Warsaw Ghetto and gave them false identities.
She died at a Warsaw hospital after she had been in hospital for a month with pneumonia.
Mrs Sendler was serving as a social worker with the city’s welfare department during World War II when she masterminded the risky rescue operations of Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto.
Records show that her team of some 20 people saved nearly 2,500 children from the Warsaw Ghetto between October 1940 and April 1943, when the Nazis burned the ghetto, shooting the residents or sending them to death camps. (more)