The Extraordinary Story of the Woman Who Saved 2,500 Children from the Warsaw Ghetto
by Tilar J. Mazzeo
Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Sep 2016
336 pages
Genre: Biography/Memoir
Publication Information
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Widow Clicquot comes an extraordinary and gripping account of Irena Sendler - the "female Oskar Schindler" - who took staggering risks to save 2,500 children from death and deportation in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II.
In 1942, one young social worker, Irena Sendler, was granted access to the Warsaw ghetto as a public health specialist. While there, she reached out to the trapped Jewish families, going from door to door and asking the parents to trust her with their young children. She started smuggling them out of the walled district, convincing her friends and neighbors to hide them. Driven to extreme measures and with the help of a network of local tradesmen, ghetto residents, and her star-crossed lover in the Jewish resistance, Irena ultimately smuggled thousands of children past the Nazis. She made dangerous trips through the city's sewers, hid children in coffins, snuck them under overcoats at checkpoints, and slipped them through secret passages in abandoned buildings.
But Irena did something even more astonishing at immense personal risk: she kept secret lists buried in bottles under an old apple tree in a friend's back garden. On them were the names and true identities of those Jewish children, recorded with the hope that their relatives could find them after the war. She could not have known that more than ninety percent of their families would perish.
In Irena's Children, Tilar Mazzeo tells the incredible story of this courageous and brave woman who risked her life to save innocent children from the Holocaust - a truly heroic tale of survival, resilience, and redemption.
"Starred Review. Sendler risked her life and the lives of her coworkers, friends, and family to help others. This account of tremendous bravery is recommended for teens and adults who are drawn to inspirational stories." - Library Journal
"While this is not the first biography of Sendler, its succinctness and overall readability will introduce many readers to a truly brave and otherwise remarkable woman who initiated and spearheaded 'a vast collective effort of decency.'" - Publishers Weekly
"Mazzeo chronicles a ray of hope in desperate times in this compelling biography of a brave woman who refused to give up." - Kirkus
This information about Irena's Children was first featured
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Tilar J. Mazzeo is the New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle bestselling author of books that include The Widow Clicquot, The Secret of Chanel No. 5, and Hotel on the Place Vendôme. She also writes on food and wine for the mainstream press, and her work has appeared in venues such as Food & Wine and in her Back-Lane Wineries guidebook series (Ten Speed Press). Her course on creative nonfiction (Great Courses), featured as in-flight viewing content on Virgin America airlines, is widely distributed and has made her a nationally prominent teacher of writing in nonfiction genres. The Clara C. Piper Associate Professor of English at Colby College, she divides her time among coastal Maine, New York City, and Saanichton, British Columbia, where she lives with her husband and stepchildren.
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