Tots to Teens & in beTween: Irena's Jars of Secrets by Marcia Vaughan

Title: Irena's Jars of Secrets

Author: Marcia Vaughan

Illustrator: Ron Mazellan

Publisher: Lee & Low Books, Inc.

Publication Date: October 28, 2011

Format: Hardback, 40 pages

Genre: Biography, History, Picture Book

How I Got It: from NetGalley for review

Summary: 

Irena Sendler, born to a Polish Catholic family, was raised to respect people of all backgrounds and to help those in need. She became a social worker; and after the German army occupied Poland during World War II, Irena knew she had to help the sick and starving Jews who were imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto. She began by smuggling food, clothing, and medicine into the ghetto, then turned to smuggling children out of the ghetto. Using false papers and creative means of escape, and at great personal risk, Irena helped rescue Jewish children and hide them in safe surroundings. Hoping to reunite the children with their families after the war, Irena kept secret lists of the children's identities.
Motivated by conscience and armed with compassion and a belief in human dignity, Irena Sendler confronted an enormous moral challenge and proved to the world that an ordinary person can accomplish deeds of extraordinary courage.

It's strange that the story of Irena Sendler and the Zegota (the Polish Council to Aid Jews) is not widely known.  Under 29 year old Irena's direction, the Zegota's children's section saved the lives of 2,500 Jewish children.  Irena and others would enter the ghetto under the health department's auspices saying that they were keeping track of a typhoid breakout.  They would pick up infants and children and hide them in ambulances and trucks.  Sometimes they had to disguise the children as packages, hide them under fake floorboards or in tool chests.  A network of convents, churches, everyday citizens, and various underground resistance movements would then hide the children.  Of course it would be hard for any parent to give up their children to strangers.  Irena couldn't promise that their children would survive, but she was honest with the parents that they would surely die in the ghetto or in the Treblinka camp.  Zegota and other organizations promised that the children would be reunited with their families after the war.  Irena kept track of the children's original names and new identities on lists that were hidden in jars buried under a tree.  She was eventually arrested by the Nazis, tortured for information on the children, and when she kept her silence for three months she was finally scheduled for execution.  Members of Zegota were able to bribe guards to release her during her transfer.  They cut it so close that Irena's name was still listed on posters as one of the rebels executed.  She spent the rest of the war in hiding, helping Zegota when she could.

When the war ended in 1945, Irena returned to Warsaw to dig up the jars.  The lists had remained safe and undiscovered the entire time.  She handed all of her information over to the Jewish National Committee so that they could begin reuniting families.  While almost all  of the 2,500 rescued children had survived the war, most of their families had died at Treblinka.  The Committee reunited families or relatives when they could, but many children decided to stay with their host families or leave the country.  What was probably the saddest part of the story was never stated outright: everyone expected the bulk of the families to survive, nobody could imagine how bad things were going to be.  Those who smuggled the children out and hid them never expected that the large majority of the children would have no one to return to.

Irena's Jars of Secrets was a well told and engaging story with warm illustrations that communicated the seriousness of the subject quite well while keeping the target age group in mind.  Vaughan has included a more detailed history in the back of the book along with photographs of Irena as well as additional resources.

Verdict:

A bittersweet story, but an important one.  Irena's Jars of Secrets shows people of every age that extraordinary circumstances can bring out the hero in the most ordinary of people.  I think this book would be a valuable addition to any public or school library.  While it's definitely worth the time to read, this is a better one to pick up from the library.