Museum “Jewish Memory and Holocaust in Ukraine”, together with the Hesed Menachem Foundation, continues its educational activities within the framework of the Jewish Heritage project. A new lesson, conducted by the Museum’s researcher Dilfuza Hlushchenko, introduced the participants of the open lecture to an extraordinary woman who became a legend in Israel and Poland during her lifetime. It was about the Polish social welfare worker, public figure, Righteous Among the Nations – Irena Sendler. She never tired of repeating that “every child who was saved through my participation is a justification for my existence on Earth, not a right to fame.”

With the beginning of World War II, Mrs. Irena, through the network of accomplices she created, helped Jewish families hide from the Nazis: she found housing, provided them with new forged documents issued in Polish names. It was on her initiative that the rescue of children from the ghetto was organized, infants, first orphans, and later children from families. Later, I. Sendler placed the rescued in orphanages (as Polish orphans), in Polish families, and Roman Catholic monasteries. She noted and kept data on the children in a secret place, thanks to which, after the end of the war, it was possible to identify and find the families of many of them. In total, Irena Sendler and her colleagues rescued almost 2,500 children, including about 800 directly from the Warsaw ghetto.

Participants of the project “Jewish Heritage” learned not only about the official biography of this amazing woman, but also about the little-known stories of her long life, full of difficulties and trials, persecutions and oppression. The audience was most interested in information about the reflection of Irena Sendler in literature and cinema. The educational meeting ended with a viewing of fragments of the film “Irena Sendler's Children”, which aroused deep emotions among the participants.

Jewish heritage is multifaceted. Let's learn interesting things together!