“The Story of Irena Sendler.” Yad Vashem. August 7, 2022. https://youtu.be/pTJY6IBgVhY?si=loATmSgA9C7zVGse
This Yad Vashem (World Holocaust Remembrance Center) video summarizes many important details from Irena’s life and brings all of the material and information together in a single six-minute clip. It also touches upon the concept of “prepping” the children once they were removed from the ghetto. This was not a fast or easy process.
Document Based Questions: What does the narrator mean by the phrase “prepping the children” and what did it entail? Were the Nazis and Gestapo the only dangers Irena and her team needed to be aware of?
This Irena Sendler interview clip is short but incredibly powerful and informative. Because no one knew about Irena until more recently, this type of footage is quite rare. We learn that the Gestapo found out about her by beating one of her colleagues until she couldn’t take it anymore and revealed her name. Irena Sendler. (2009 ) United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/oral-history/irena-sendler-describes-how-she-was-arrested-and-tortured-by-the-gestapo
Document Based Questions: Why was Zegota so motivated to help Irena escape from prison? What do you notice resting on Irena’s abdomen during the interview? How would you describe the “file” Irena was keeping at home?
“We present the account of Irena Sendler’s daughter, Janina Zgrzembska, from the oral history collection of POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews.” Portal Muzeum POLIN. Irena Sendler: An Inconvenient Witness to History. April 29, 2015. https://youtu.be/HPfu_HeUDlM?si=f6K2ZmOpkG98YfMm
Document Based Questions: When did Irena start talking about her story? Why did survivors of the Warsaw ghetto seek her out after the war? When did Janina find out about her mother’s heroism?
Jewish Women’s Archive. “Irena Sendler saves Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto.” (Viewed on December 2, 2023) <https://jwa.org/thisweek/oct/20/1943/this-week-in-history-irena-sendler-saves-jewish-children-from-warsaw-ghetto>
Jewish Virtual library – Irena Sendler
Document Based Questions: What were the names of the high school students who discovered Irena while working on their history project? Where did Irena send most of the children she smuggled out? Did Irena think of herself as a hero?