Irena Stanisława Sendler;
was a Polish social worker, nurse, and resistance member who, as head of the children’s section of the underground Żegota Council, led efforts to smuggle about 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto during the Holocaust. Using false papers, covert routes, and safe shelters, she saved them from Nazi extermination. Arrested and tortured in 1943, she refused to betray them and escaped execution through a bribe. Honored as Righteous Among the Nations in 1965, she remained a symbol of courage and compassion until her death in 2008.