Results: Irena Sendler and her 2500 children

Irena Sendler, also called " Jolanta" or "The female Schindler", saved 2500 Jewish kids from the Warsaw Ghetto. She personally smuggled more than 400 children. Irena and her team from Żegota (Polish Council to Aid Jews) buried lists of the smuggled kids in jars to keep track of their original and new identities, hoping to return the kids to their original families once the war was over. Did you hear about Irina Sendler's story before this survey?

In 1943 Irena was arrested. The Gestapo fractured her feet and legs while torturing her. She didn't betray her comrades or the rescued kids. She was sentenced to death by a firing squad. Żegota saved her life by bribing the guards on the way to her execution. After escaping, she hid from the Germans, but returned to Warsaw under a fake name to help the Jews. During the Warsaw Uprising she worked as a nurse in a public hospital where she hid five Jews. She stayed there until the Germans left Warsaw. No doubt she was a brave woman to come back. "People who stand up for others, for the weak, are very rare," said Marek Edelman, the last surviving commander of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. "The world would have been a better place if there were more of them." If you had been living back then, do you think you would have been able to be as brave as Irina to help others while risking your own life?

After the war, Irena and her coworkers gathered all the jars she buried with the children's names and locations and gave them to the the Central Committee of Polish Jews. Unfortunately almost all of the children's parents had been killed at the Treblinka extermination camp or had gone missing. While she survived, over 700 Polish men, women and children were killed while helping Jews. Do you know anyone who was rescued or had a family member rescued by Irena Sendler and her comrades?

Each family that helped a kid had to promise to return the children to any surviving family members after the war. Unfortunately, this promise was not always kept. Irena spent years after the war trying to track down missing children and reconnect family members. Of the remaining orphans, some 400 were taken to Israel by Zegota members. Many others chose to stay with their adopted parents. Despite Irena's efforts to trace them, more than 400 children are still missing; presumably they either did not survive or they are living somewhere in Poland or elsewhere, maybe unaware of their Jewish identity. Let's imagine for a moment you could be one of these kids. What would you prefer?