Life in a Jar: The Irena Sendler Project

In October 1940, all Jews are required to move into the Jewish District. Warsaw had become somewhat stable and functional again; however, “the sealing of the ghetto [throws] everything into turmoil again” (120). To add insult to injury, as is common, the Germans choose Yom Kippur for the move, turning a traditional holy day of fasting and praying into a day of labor for the bricklayers, many of whom “fainted or died” (120)trying to complete the wall. By November 15, the Jewish District is sealed. For a time, Germans routinely enter the District in order to steal from Jews; however, with the resurgence of typhus in the ghetto, the practice ends.

Social workers are further forbidden from entering the ghetto, as benefits are forbidden to Jews. The two Irenas continue to enter daily in nurse’s uniforms using Epidemic Control passes signed by Dr. Majkowski. They wear layers filled with contraband to leave behind with families, and in order to allay suspicion, they enter and leave through different gates. Irena Sendler even begins wearing a white armband to further become invisible; it is additionally “a measure of solidarity” (122)that reminds her of her acts of resistance from her university days.

The ghetto is overcrowded; it has become “normal for seven or eight people to live in each room of a flat” (123), and the streets are filled with beggars. Irena begins to note “time in the ghetto by noting the disappearance of those beggars she [has come] to recognize” (123). She notices one family in particular, a couple with six children who sing every day. As time passes, the number of their children continues to decrease, until only the mother and father remain, still singing, but now with the mother in the stroller: “Then she too was gone, and there was no more singing” (124).

By late December, the two Irenas are entering the ghetto several times daily. Irena Sendler meets with Ewa and tells her of her plan to begin smuggling orphans out of the ghetto into foster homes on the Aryan side. Half of the courthouse is inside the ghetto and half is on the Aryan side; through sympathetic accomplices, Irena’s plan is to smuggle orphans through the courthouse’s basement tunnels. Irena suggests, too, that she could sneak Ewa out; Ewa declines, saying that her looks would give her away, and that the “ghetto may be a prison, or a zoo, but outside this wall I’m a hunted animal. Here, at least I have an identity […] a shred of dignity” (125).

Ewa has also begun dating a Jewish Police officer, Schmuel. Irena is disappointed, but Ewa argues that it is a good thing, and that he is one of the good ones. She stops Irena’s protests, though, saying that Irena “cannot know what it’s like to live inside […] We all do what we can and what we must” (126). She also tells her that Schmuel knows which Germans can be bought.

A few days later, Irena observes Schmuel from a distance. At first, he seems “gregarious” (127).She notices, too, that “in spite of the rationing,” he is “one of the few Jews or Poles to still have a slightly rounded belly” (127). Suddenly, a small boy runs by; Irena watches as Schmuel grabs him, holds him in the air, then cracks his legs with the baton, leaving the boy screaming on the ground.

Irena waits for the gate to get busy again, then approaches Schmuel, introducing herself and asking to talk in private. She first inquires about the boy. Schmuel says he’ll be sent to Gensia Prison, where “[a]t least he’ll have a meal every day and a place to sleep” (128). Irena knows that the children in Gensia receive “starvation rations and [sleep] on straw mats in a cold dormitory,” reasoning that Schmuel is “either ignorant or lying” (128). She then makes arrangements with him to move packages through the gate at a high cost—she sees nothing of the “clumsy ‘sweet boy’ that Ewa described” (128).

The next day, Irena meets Antoni Danbrowski, an ambulance driver sympathetic to their cause, to move supplies through the gate. After a show by Schmuel, the ambulance is allowed to pass through; down an alley, teens from Ewa’s Youth Circle collect the supplies and disappear.

The next day, Irena attempts to bring 10,000 zloty into the ghetto. However, she is pulled aside and searched, and the money is found. Thinking quickly, she demands to be let through on the orders of Dr. Majkowski. The guard calls, confirms this with the doctor, and lets Irena pass—but not without taking 1,000 zloty “for [his] trouble” (130). 

In October, the Germans begin to shrink the Jewish ghetto even further. Ewa, as a result, is now able to look out her window into the Aryan side of Warsaw; this view makes one of the younger boys “feel like an animal in the zoo” (132). This proves to be particularly prescient, as German soldiers would frequently “sight-see” (132)in the ghetto, even taking their wives and girlfriends along.

Winter comes early, in October, and by January the cold is fierce. The spread of typhus worsens, and Irena and her mother find lice nearly every night upon her return. Irena begins to develop “a sense of how close to death a beggar [is] by the state of his clothes or rags, or if she wore shoes” (133). German soldiers begin to arrest more Poles for aiding Jews: “Every Pole’s worst nightmare [is] Gestapo interrogation; and everyone [has] some secret or another […] It [is] impossible to know whom to trust” (134).

By the end of 1941, America has joined the war, and Russia has stopped the German advance, giving people hope. The decrees, however, continue.