Irena Sendler

One of the greatest heroes of the 20th century died this week, but most people have never heard of her. Irena Sendler, a Polish Catholic social worker, saved 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw ghetto during the Nazi occupation of World War II. She smuggled them out of the ghetto, gave them non-Jewish aliases, and placed them in convents, orphanages, and homes. She kept detailed records of their true identities and preserved the records in jars buried in a friend's garden.

She was eventually captured by the Nazis and tortured, but she refused to divulge any information about the children or about the underground organization with which she worked. Miraculously spared from execution herself, she worked diligently after the war to reunite the children with their families, only to find that most of their relatives had been deported and exterminated. Most of the children were adopted by Polish families or emigrated to Israel.

She died on Monday in a Warsaw nursing home at the age of 98. After living in obscurity for most of her life, she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize last year. But she never thought of herself as a hero. She once said, "Every child saved with my help is the justification of my existence on this earth and not a title to glory."

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