Life in a Jar: The Irena Sendler Project by Jack Mayer

Author:Jack Mayer [Mayer, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: History, Poland, Irena Sendler, Holocaust, World War 2, Warsaw
Publisher: Long Trail Press
Published: 2011-03-28T04:00:00+00:00

The Jewish Fighting Force, ZOB, hereby informs the population that the following have been convicted of crimes against the Jewish People:

The Judenrat in Warsaw and its presidium, on the grounds of having collaborated with the conqueror in signing the deportation order.

The managers of the “shops” and the Jewish Police, due to their cruel treatment of the workers and the “illegal” Jewish population.

Retaliatory measures will be adopted in all their severity.

* * * * * * * * * *

The day before the ZOB’s proclamation was posted and circulated in the ghetto, the Jewish Deputy Police Commander, Jakob Lejkin, was shot to death as he walked from the police station to his home on Gensia Street. Lejkin, one of the few Jewish Policemen spared deportation by the Germans, had been an enthusiastic commander during the liquidation. Irena wondered if the last thing Lejkin saw in this life had been the flash of Adam’s pistol.

* * * * * * * * * *

Irena obsessed about how they could continue smuggling children to the Aryan side without funds to support them. In early November, a coworker at the Welfare Office, Stefania Dybczynska, not one of Irena’s network, left a note on her desk.

I know what you are doing. I can help.

Stefania was an old acquaintance from university days, a fellow student of Professor Radynska. They had shared some classes but were never close, and even now she kept to herself. Irena lingered near Stefania’s desk as she prepared to leave for the day. They exchanged knowing glances and walked out together.

When they were alone on the street, Stefania said, “I know you’re helping Jews. I hear that ‘keeping cats’ is very expensive and that you need a lot of money. Someone, I can’t say who, instructed me to tell you of a new organization – ZEGOTA. ZEGOTA has money. In a few days a courier will contact you. The code word is Trojan.”

Irena watched Stefania walk off alone and wondered at the secrets Warsovians kept.

* * * * * * * * * *

Irena’s network no longer knocked on tenement doors. The “wild children,” some called them “wild cats,” who had neither papers nor ration cards, subsisted solely on smuggled food. Most lived in a secret labyrinth, a warren of attics and cellars, tunnels and crude bunkers without heat. Hatchways opened into sewer lines for smuggling. Irena and her liaisons scrambled over rubble and debris, were led through black tunnels, many reeking of sewage, and climbed through ceiling panels into concealed attics behind armoires and false walls in deserted apartments. The wild ones remained underground for weeks at a time without daylight, without a toilet, sometimes in spaces so cramped they couldn’t stand. They were filthy and lice-infested.

With Adam’s help Irena made final arrangements for five children to escape together through the sewers to the care of Sister Wanda Garczynska, Mother Superior at the Order of the Immaculate Conception. In preparation, Irena had visited the convent and spoken with one of the Sisters, Maria Ena, about receiving the children.

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