Irena Sendler

Irena Sendler was a social worker and hero during the Holocaust in Warsaw, Poland coordinating the rescue of 2,500 Jewish children with Żegota, an underground organization.

She used her credentials as a social worker to freely enter and exit the Jewish ghetto and organized the smuggling of children out with false identity documents through a network of safe houses, orphanages, and churches. Sendler kept careful coded records of all the children with the hopes of reunification after the war ended.

In October 1943, she was arrested and tortured brutally by the Gestapo but didn't give up any information and no records were compromised. She was back with Żegota by December 1943 and continued supporting their efforts through the end of the war.