Post­ed by Nao­mi Firestone-Teeter

Ire­na Sendler is one of the Oth­er Schindlers.” Dur­ing World War II she helped cre­ate over 3,000 false doc­u­ments to help Jew­ish fam­i­lies and joined the Żego­ta resis­tance (Coun­cil to Aid Jews) as head of their children’s sec­tion. In this capac­i­ty, she smug­gled chil­dren and babies out of ghet­tos and buried lists of the hid­den chil­dren in jars in order to keep track of them. Sendler is rec­og­nized by Yad Vashem as one of the Right­eous Among the Nations, has received numer­ous awards for her coura­geous efforts (includ­ing Poland’s high­est civil­ian dec­o­ra­tion), and there have been efforts to nom­i­nate her for the Nobel Prize.


Want to learn more about Sendler? Check out these great resources:

Life in a Jar: The Ire­na Sendler Project, Jack May­er (March 2011)



Ire­na Sendler: Moth­er of the Chil­dren of the Holo­caust, Anna Mieszkows­ka (Novem­ber 2010)



Ire­na Sendler and the Chil­dren of the War­saw Ghet­to, Susan Gold­man Rubin (April 2011)



The Oth­er Schindler… Ire­na Sendler: Sav­ior of the Holo­caust Chil­dren, Abhi­jit Thite and Priya Gokhale (March 2010)

Orig­i­nal­ly from Lan­cast­er, Penn­syl­va­nia, Nao­mi is the CEO of Jew­ish Book Coun­cil. She grad­u­at­ed from Emory Uni­ver­si­ty with degrees in Eng­lish and Art His­to­ry and, in addi­tion, stud­ied at Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don. Pri­or to her role as exec­u­tive direc­tor, Nao­mi served as the found­ing edi­tor of the JBC web­site and blog and man­ag­ing edi­tor of Jew­ish Book World. In addi­tion, she has over­seen JBC’s dig­i­tal ini­tia­tives, and also devel­oped the JBC’s Vis­it­ing Scribe series and Unpack­ing the Book: Jew­ish Writ­ers in Conversation.