“Life in a jar” is the name of a piece of theatre created by some American students from Kansas’ University and their teacher; the play was born from research and interviews to tell the story of a great woman. In 1965 she was recognized by the Institute of Jerusalem as “one of the righteous among the nations”. Irena Sendler, during the Word War II, together with members of the Polish Resistance, managed to save thousands of children from the Warsaw Ghetto. Her social commitment continued in the following years, until her death in 2008 at the age of 98 years old. Irena Sendler was born in Warsaw on February 15th, 1910, and lost her father at the age of eight. In fact, he was a great doctor who wanted to assist Jew patients for free, but at some point got too ill and left this world. Since a very young age Irena Sendler showed her opposition to any kind of discrimination, including the segregation of Jewish students - for this reason, she got expelled from the University for three years. Irena participated on the scout movement while frequenting the Polish Democratic Youth association and the Poland Socialist Party. After finishing her studies, she became a social worker, foreseeing the opportunity to work closely from the weakest. When the Second World War began, she was 29; about 400,000 Jews were moved into the Warsaw Ghetto in precarious hygienic conditions, aggravated by the lack of food and medicine: epidemics multiplied and the mortality rate got very high. In 1942 the secret organization "Council for aid to the Jews" was found and Irena immediately became one of the main activists as head of the children's department, with the codename 'Jolanta'. Sendler obtained a special permit as an official operator of the Department Against Contagious Diseases, looking for possible symptoms of typhoid. She created a network of solidarity that allowed her to hide and save thousands of children In some cases, the children were put to sleep with pills and placed in bags to make them look dead; in others, the newborns were hidden inside the toolboxes of plumbers and employees; or still, they used secret tunnels inside the old courthouse that bordered the ghetto. Irena Sendler gave the children new Christian names, a family or a center that could accommodate them and kept the old names combined with their parents- she used to bury the cans with the information in a garden, under an apple tree.
On October 20th, 1943, Sendler got arrested by Gestapo and locked up in a prison. She was tortured for three months - she even got her legs broken -, but she didn't speak, give the name of her companions nor revealed where she had hidden the cans containing the names. She was charged with death penalty, but on her shooting day a German guard, corrupted by money, saved her. Irena lived the last years before the end of the war in anonymity, continuing to help as many people as possible and helping families to get back together. Until 1999 this history remained unknown. Thanks to the work of the University of Kansas’ students and their amazing theater play, it became famous worldwide. Isidora Zanon