Life in a Jar: The Irena Sendler Project

Life in a Jar: The Irena Sendler Project is a work of creative nonfiction written by Jack Mayer and originally published in 2010. The book tells two overlapping stories. One is about Irena Sendler, a Polish social worker who helped save 2,500 Jewish children in Warsaw from the Nazis during World War II. The other is about three high school girls—Liz Cambers, Megan Stewart, and Sabrina Coons. In 1999, the girls, with the help of their history teacher, rediscover Irena’s heroism and tell her story to the world through a National History Day project. Although based on true events, the work is considered to be creative nonfiction because the author used the real-life elements as a base in order to create a story (e.g., the dialogue and many of the details are inventions); as a result, the book is developed more like a novel than a work of history.

Part 1 takes place in Kansas, beginning in 1999. Liz Cambers, known as a troublemaker, has just begun a new school year; in order to avoid taking another class with a teacher she dislikes, she requests to join Mr. Conard’s (Mr. C.’s) “Creative Social Studies” class, a demanding course in which students are expected to compete in National History Day. Although she is at first disaffected by the class, her interest is piqued when she comes across the story of Irena Sendler, both because she cannot believe Irena’s story is virtually unknown and because the specific nature of the story—a woman convincing parents to give up their children in order to save them—touches a personal nerve with her, as her own mother had given her up while still a child to be raised by her grandparents. Mr. C finds the project to be interesting and suggests that she join up with another student, Megan Stewart; soon after, he also adds Sabrina Coons to the group, an older student whom he feels will help guide the two younger girls.

The girls spend the fall researching the project, slowly digging up more information, sometimes with the aid of helpful resources, such as the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous (JFR). They learn more about Irena’s actions and her work with ZEGOTA, but the more they find, the more questions are raised: Why did Irena do what she did? What risks did she face? Most importantly, for them, why don’t more people know about her? They wonder how they would have reacted and what they would have done. As the play begins to take shape, tensions rise among the three as they feel ever more attached to and possessive of the project for their own personal reasons. In January 2000, they give their first public performances of the play. The first performance, a local performance, is a resounding success; the second is at District History Day, where they take home first prize and move onto the state competition. As they prepare for State, they continue to research, rehearse, and revise the play. They also continue to wonder what happened to Irena and vow to make sure flowers are left on her grave every year—once they find out where it is.

Part 2 moves back in time to Warsaw, September 1939, at the start of the German invasion of Warsaw, in order to tell the story of Irena Sendler. Irena and her coworker Irena Schultz—known as the “two Irenas”—are social workers who game the system in order to aid impoverished Jewish families in an increasingly anti-Semitic Poland, with the help of a blind eye turned toward them by their boss, Jan Dobraczynski, and his assistant, Jaga Piotrowska. As the Germans advance on Warsaw, Jan and Jaga quietly begin giving the two Irenas false papers to provide to Jewish families in order to give them new identities. Irena Sendler sets up a network of trusted social workers to help them distribute funds, supplies, and papers to those in need. At the end of September, Germany defeats Poland and takes control of Warsaw; the Germans immediately begin instituting new discriminatory and repressive decrees almost daily. The social climate becomes increasingly oppressive for Warsaw’s Jewish population, who are forced into a small ghetto. The population, Aryan and Jew alike, is split as to the ultimate intentions of the Germans: some, like Irena’s friend and former coworker Ewa, remain hopeful and try to manage as best they can, whereas others, like her brother Adam, firmly believe that the Germans intend to execute them all and prepare for battle.

By November, all Jews are required to wear the Star of David armbands and their caloric intakes are reduced to fewer than 200 calories daily. That winter is bitterly cold; Irena and her network, with the help of Ewa and her own CENTOS, continue to do what they can to assist those in need. In February, Irena meets secretly with Irena Schultz, Jan, Jaga, and Ewa to put together a more ambitious plan to use the Germans’ fear of typhus, which is widespread in the overcrowded Jewish ghetto, to their advantage to sneak aid to Jewish families. Irena and others from her network enter the ghetto daily with aid, sometimes several times per day, each time risking execution. Irena begins to note the passage of time by the passing of the homeless. Irena enacts a plan to begin smuggling orphans, dying on the street, out of the ghetto through the basement tunnels of the courthouse, which lies half in the ghetto and half on the Aryan side.

By the spring of 1942, they are simultaneously sneaking aid in and sneaking orphans out of the ghetto through various means; at one point they are almost caught, but a pediatrician and orphanage director, Janusz Korczak, assists them. Around the same time, reports begin to surface of a strange new camp, Treblinka, with no prisoners’ barracks. Some realize that it’s a death camp, while others accept the official explanation that it’s simply a transfer station. Mass deportations begin in July; whereas they had previously only smuggled out orphans in the direst circumstances, with the help of Ewa’s boyfriend, a Jewish Police officer with advance knowledge of the deportations, parents begin asking Irena to help their children escape. They do so, placing the children wherever they can—Aryan families willing to help or else Catholic orphanages able to take the children in. As they do so, Irena and Jaga keep careful track of the children’s Jewish names, their new Aryan names, and where they’ve been placed, ostensibly to reunite the children with their families after the war, but also because they feel it is important for them to know their origins. They bury these lists in jars beneath an apple tree close to Jaga’s house—where the title of the Kansas students’ play, Life in a Jar, derives its name.

By August 1942, only the most deluded still deny that Treblinka is a death camp. Due to a redrawing of the district boundaries, Irena is forced to begin moving the children through the sewers with the help of Ewa’s brother Adam and his paramilitary organization, the ZOB. The deportations end in the fall, leaving only 30,000 Jewish families who have exemptions for labor purposes officially living in Warsaw. Irena begins instead aiding families living underground, as the remaining Jewish families believe they are protected. However, her network is stretched to its limit, the most pressing concern being financial, as they need funds to support the children they’ve placed—some families do it for free, but many others need payment to continue to aid the children. In November, a coworker connects Irena to the organization ZEGOTA, an underground group with strong finances; ZEGOTA is likewise trying to save Jewish children but have realized they need Irena’s expertise, so they ask Irena to head up their children’s division.

In January, the ZOB begins to fight back. In April, the Germans launch a final offensive against the ZOB and the ghetto; they give the Germans a good fight, but after three weeks, the ghetto is leveled. Irena, having no more children to rescue, returns to work. However, in October, Irena is arrested in her home and taken to the notorious Pawiak Prison. She is held and tortured for 100 days, each day with the fear that she will be executed. On January 20, her name is finally called.

Part 3 moves back to the present and to Kansas. In February 2000, the girls receive an email from the JFR informing them that Irena Sendler is, in fact, still alive. They immediately compose a letter to Irena, and in April, they receive their first reply from Irena herself. At the same time, they continue to revise and rehearse the play; in May, they win the Kansas History Day competition, but fail to win the national competition in June. Nevertheless, they are praised separately by the judges for becoming “agents of history” (247). The students begin to receive requests for performances, and they begin to take their play on the road. That winter, they perform at another school where a successful businessman happens to be in attendance. After hearing that they are interested in performing the play for Irena, he agrees to fund their trip to Poland. In May 2001, they travel to Poland for the first time. Thanks to a newspaper article published just before they arrive, the girls are treated like celebrities, and their trip is filled with meetings, performances, tours, and interviews. Additionally, they learn how Irena escaped from Pawiak Prison—ZEGOTA bribed an SS officer to release her; the officer was later denounced and executed. Further, they learn that Communist Poland looked down upon the World War II-era Polish partisans—hence why Irena was not better known and celebrated.

Finally, several days after arriving, they are able to meet Irena Sendler. They spend two days sitting and talking with the aging, frail hero, striking an instant love and kinship; after two days, they bid her farewell and fly back to the United States.

Over the next couple of years, the girls continue to perform the play, and thanks to the generosity of donors, they are able to return to Warsaw to visit with Irena several more times, as well. As they grow and move on with their education, new students join the cast, some of whom are likewise able to travel to Poland to meet Irena. Scholarships are set up in her name; days of remembrance are named for her across the world, including in Kansas City and in Warsaw; and awards and prizes are named for Irena. On May 12, 2008, shortly after one final visit, Irena passes away peacefully.