Irena Sendler, a Polish Catholic social worker, smuggled approximately 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto during the Nazi occupation, saving them from certain death at Treblinka. Her methods were ingenious and extraordinarily dangerous.

Sendler entered the ghetto daily, claiming to conduct sanitary inspections. She and her network, Żegota (the Polish Council to Aid Jews), smuggled children out in toolboxes, sacks, coffins, and even through the sewer system. Babies were drugged to keep them silent and smuggled in ambulances pretending to be typhus victims.

Each rescued child's true identity was recorded on tissue paper and hidden in glass jars buried under an apple tree in Sendler's garden. She hoped to reunite children with their families after the war—a hope that proved tragically impossible for most.

In October 1943, the Gestapo arrested Sendler. She was tortured brutally—her legs and feet were broken—but she refused to betray her network or reveal the children's locations. She was sentenced to death but Żegota bribed a guard to release her. She spent the rest of the war in hiding, continuing her rescue work.

After the war, Sendler dug up the jars and attempted to reunite children with any surviving relatives. Most parents had perished. She spent her postwar life in relative obscurity, working as a hospital administrator, her heroism unrecognized by the world until decades later.