Irena Sendler: The Heroic Woman Who Rescued 2,500 Children from the Warsaw Ghetto

Amazon Customer: Great story about the Jewish children that are saved by a Polish social worker; risking her life to help as many children as she could!

United States on Oct 23, 2023

Nancy S. Graham: One of the best books I have ever read about the hidden Children of the Holocaust. Irena and her group of courageous Warsaw resisters, are up against almost unsurmountable odds. In the end, the Germans went door to door and shot everyone and burned down the city. Still the group was able to save 2500 children. Very well written and comprehensive. Awesome book!!

United States on Aug 08, 2023

Bruce Hall: Arrived a little ahead of time! Wife loves historical fiction, so I hope she likes this book.

Canada on Mar 31, 2023

sara hicks: Good read

United Kingdom on Jul 10, 2021

Suzanne Fortier: Il y a plus d’info sur Irena que de détails sur les faits et gestes pour sauver les enfants. Ne tient pas l’intérêt à l’histoire. Décevant

Canada on Nov 30, 2020

anonymous: Just read it..
To all the evil in the world...People like Irena and dozens and dozens in the book..
World still has hope...

Irena Ala Adam rachela and many more ...
One of the things which I learned from this book. A holocaust survivor rarely talked about their experience. You had to witness it.
How you think you will react and how you react actually is different ..

It seems it was preordained....Courage is the second name for irena and her friends..

Just read it ..

India on Oct 24, 2020

Charlotte’s Web and her opinions on everything!: Irena's children is about a brave, spunky and courageous woman who, with the help,of many others, helped about 2500 Jewish children, and some adults in Warsaw, Poland. She was a social worker who had a pass to go into the ghetto until the very end.

This book is well researched but for me, because Irena was fleeing any public praise or acclaim, preferred to leave many details about her miraculous accomplishments quiet. We know she had a Jewish married lover, but little is known about him. Many sentences said things like: "Maybe they were walking, or perhaps coffee, or simply chatting". It was very vague at times, and I wish the author had taken some liberties and just made it be a concrete sentence.

With that being said, it is perhaps the best read on Irena and her moral compass to help the Jewish people in Warsaw. She was a hero. She deserved the novel prize that Al Gore got instead, because her story is relevant insofar as people turning their backs, she opened her arms and took as many as she could.

United States on Feb 02, 2017

GirlScoutDad: Warsaw, Poland, according to the author nicknamed "the Paris of Eastern Europe" for its colorful streets, lively cafes, and intellectual ferment before the Nazi invasion in World War II, became one of the most grim and lethal places on earth for the next five years. If you rendered support to the resistance, the Gestapo would torture you ruthlessly then kill you. If on the other hand, you collaborated with the Germans, the resistance would find you and put a bullet in you. If you tried to hide out, roving bands of self-appointed bounty-hunters would rat you out to either the Gestapo or the resistance, receiving no more than a loaf of stale bread or a sack of rotten potatoes in exchange for your life. If you managed to avoid all of the above, then you were free to die of starvation, cold exposure, one of many epidemics of typhus, or simple despair. In the midst of all this stood a band of true heroes, risking all to oppose tyranny and fascism, putting their lives on the line every day to save lives of the innocent. Irena Sendler - the 'female Schindler' - stood at the nexus of a network of jewish and Polish resistance cells.

As a Catholic social worker, Irena created and...

United States on Dec 09, 2016

EJJonAmazon: I have mixed feelings about this book. From the start I did not like the writing style, and I was feeling that the intended audience was the light reader, not anyone with prior knowledge. How does the author know this, I asked myself often as I went along. Then I found that at the rear there were over 260 numbered chapter notes. The only problem was that there were no corresponding superscripted numbers in the actual chapters signalling that you should go to the end and look up the note. As a result, the value of the notes, which were actually very good, was largely lost. You can't really read the notes by themselves, you have to know at which point in the chapter they are referenced to. Who to blame? Author or publisher? Would I have evaluated the text differently if I had been able to read the notes as I went along? Then I was uneasy about the mixture of fact, ex post reconstruction and pseudo fiction. While the author is quite open about what she did, and it is a very difficult area to write in, I was still uneasy (and I have read loads in this area). I was also uneasy about the way one character was dealt with, namely, Wiera Gran. In the main text the accusations that she...

United Kingdom on Oct 19, 2016

Serenity...: It has been said that Irena Sendler was the female Schindler of WW II. After reading this true story, I can only say that this lady should have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize instead of someone who won it for global warming.

At 4' 11" of height one learns quickly that diminutive in stature has absolutely nothing to do with courage. Her absolutely daring exploits while working as a public health specialist allowed her access to the Warsaw ghetto in 1942 and beyond. Thus, begins the story of Irena and the 2500 Jewish children that were somehow brought to safety on the Aryan side. She was the first to admit that she was only one of many to help. And, always downplayed her role of saving the children.

Dr. Radlinsha was a major influence in her life from 1935 to 1940. Dr. R’s students became known as her ‘girls’ later in the book and all were involved in the ghetto. Previous to that, Irena’s father was one that played an important role in creating the Polish Socialist Party. One is able to ascertain that she had major role models earlier in her life. Did they contribute to Irena’s stance in the ghetto? Absolutely, I feel.

This is a complex story and...

United States on Oct 18, 2016