In October 1940, German officials decreed that all Jewish residents of Warsaw must move into a designated area, creating the Warsaw Ghetto—a grim and overcrowded enclave sealed off from the rest of the city. By mid-November the ghetto, enclosed by a 10-foot-high wall topped with barbed wire, was home to over 400,000 Jews crammed into just 1.3 square miles. The dire conditions, compounded by insufficient food allotments, led to the deaths of 83,000 individuals from starvation and disease by mid-1942.
The nightmare intensified as deportations to death camps began in July of that year. The Warsaw ghetto uprising began on April 19, 1943, after German troops and police entered the ghetto to arrest and then deport its inhabitants. Jewish insurgents inside the ghetto resisted these efforts in what became the largest uprising by Jews during World War II and the first significant urban revolt against German occupation in Europe. By May, the German army crushed the uprising and deported surviving ghetto residents to concentration camps and killing centers.
Amidst the darkness, Irena Stanislawa Sendler, a Polish social worker and nurse known by her undercover name as Jolanta, emerged as a beacon of hope. Operating through a secret network named Zegota, Sendler courageously rescued more than 2,000 Jewish children from the ghetto. Despite being arrested, tortured, and sentenced to death in the infamous Pawiak prison, she remained steadfast, never revealing their whereabouts. Though honored at Yad Vashem, Sendler's heroism is less widely known than that of some other Holocaust figures.
Historian Ralph Nurnberger sheds light on the harrowing experiences within the Warsaw Ghetto and the extraordinary bravery of Irena Sendler, who risked everything to save Jewish children from its confines.
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