Irena Sendler: In the Name of Their Mothers (2011)

• 85%
• 2011
• Documentary
• Mary Skinner

95-year-old Irena Sendler tells the true story of a secret network of Polish women who rescued thousands of Jewish children from the Warsaw ghetto and hid them until the end of the war. In 1943 the Gestapo captured Sendler, tortured her and sentenced her to death, but she refused to divulge anything about the women or the hidden children. She escaped on the day she was to be executed when the Polish Resistance bribed a German guard. All of the 2500 children rescued by her conspiracy survived the war and many were re-united with their Jewish families. But for decades, they could not tell their stories. The new Communist regime in Poland silenced former members of the Polish Resistance and most of Sendler's liaisons were persecuted or exiled. Over 65 years later they can finally speak about their wartime work as the once hidden Jewish children return to Warsaw to re-unite with their Polish protectors.