Life in a Jar: The Irena Sendler Project

“Not a single Black person lived in the Uniontown school district, and, as far as she knew, there had never been a kid of any other color except white in the high school. Kansas City also had a lot of Jewish people, but she was pretty sure there had never been a Jewish kid in Uniontown High School either. Warsaw and Kansas City were other worlds—Jews and Blacks were other people—and until now she didn’t think much about it.”

As the book progresses, the gap between the girls’ experience in Kansas and the experience of Irena in Warsaw closes, at least symbolically. Not only do the girls begin to better understand a semblance of diversity through their work, but they begin to see that a lack of representation in Uniontown does not preclude the same kinds of bigotry and hatred that developed in Warsaw.

“Sabrina smiled in a way that Megan knew meant she was not OK and did not want to talk about it.”

Throughout the book there are various manifestations of this idea: the communication, or lack of communication, of pain and tragedy, and the way we wrestle with these things as human beings. This moment adds another dimension to this—it becomes a kind of language that’s understood by the recipient, taking on a semiotic element.

“[Liz] had an urgent but very private reason for needing to be Irena—something she could not share with anyone. Her secret fantasy […] was that word would somehow get to her mother, if she was alive, about this amazing project her Lizzie was in charge of, and she’d come and see her as Irena in the play […] She’d find Liz afterwards and beg for her forgiveness, but Liz would turn away, glad for her suffering.”

This is an important moment in the characterization of Liz. It reinforces the theme of silence while simultaneously connecting to the role historical narrative plays in our development. Together, these develop the character of Liz, putting us in touch with her inner desires, warts and all, and the significance of the play for her. Her possessiveness of the play is also demonstrated—in her mind, she is in charge of the play, whereas elsewhere the girls wrestle for this power en route to becoming more mindful of one another as a team.

“She had read once—she couldn’t remember where—that the dead were not really underground in their graves. Only their bones rested in their coffins. The spirits of the dead were in the wind, in rushing water, in sunset and moonrise, in the smell of the earth.”

This is another way of describing the role history plays in our lives, as the resurgence and immortality of the dead in the world around us. This concept is naturalized in the abstract—rather than in stories, they exist in nature. This becomes a symbol later in the book at the Treblinka memorial site.

“The photographs disturbed her the most—black-and-white images of starving children and orphans staring at her through the mystery of time and the harsh freezing of a painful moment. No doubt all of these children had died shortly after these photos were taken. They were not the abstraction called ‘The Holocaust,’ not an imagined reconstruction in words; they were specific children, so real that she felt she could enter their photographs, or they could step out of their hell.”

Although the passage suggests that there is something more real about the photographs, more visceral, the conceit connects to the purpose of their project. Photographs present a perspective, as well—what is not shot is as important as what is. This is the same kind of wrestling with truth the girls experience in writing the play as they deliberate which parts of the story to keep and try to understand to what extent a creative historical play makes the past real.

“On the street [Irena] saw a column of smoke rising a few blocks away. Trams ran on schedule, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, though everyone inside the tram car carried a black rubber gas mask.”

This idea connects to the experiences of the girls, in particular Megan, who fights against the normalization of her mother’s illness. In some respects, everyone just wants everything to be normal so that they can go on with their lives. However, to do so, it instead could be argued, merely gives the oppressors greater power. Life does need to go on, but things in WWII Warsaw were decidedly not normal.

“Irena was most distressed to see her books, once so dignified in her bookcase, now flotsam and jetsam strewn over a crude barrier erected to stop a German tank.”

Her books symbolize not only knowledge but peace: it’s easy to forget when one is not faced with invaders that studying is a luxury of peacetime. Not only is it a perversion that her books are being repurposed for war—although it is also true that the symbols of knowledge are being used as a barricade against invasion—but the repurposing itself represents a fundamental break in Irena’s day-to-day life.

“Wireless radios still received propaganda from Radio Berlin and Radio Moscow, trumpeting the German and Soviet ‘liberation’ of Poland. Occasionally a BBC or Paris station was tunable. Each reported a different war.” 

Communication becomes key, but the veracity of communication becomes problematic at the same time. The varying perspectives raises the question of truth: Can it be said that there were truly four “different” wars going on, or is there just one true version of the war? This is not to say that there are no true events, but of course these discrepancies help to undermine Irena’s efforts and lead many to their deaths, as they accept a version of events—that Treblinka is a transfer station—that is in no way true.

“Until he had forged papers and an Aryan identity, Stefan was compelled to wear the Star of David armband, and when Irena was with him she felt conspicuous, in danger.”

This is one way the Jewish symbol was weaponized in World War II—aside from marking the identity of the wearer, the armband served to remove the wearer’s humanity, reducing them to only a symbol, the armband. This passage also connects to the concept of identity, as Stefan here still exists in the in-between: his identity depends on his papers and what his documents claim him to be, even if those documents are forgeries.

“Everyone had heard accounts of assault, even murder, perpetrated against unlucky and unknown Jews in Warsaw. But Ewa—her best friend Ewa—had suffered directly from the occupier’s excess.”

The Kansas girls become more attached the project the more real it becomes, and this passage represents how that worked during the occupation, as well. It isn’t that Irena didn’t care prior to Ewa’s experience. To the contrary, Irena’s actions in support of the Jewish population, actions which could have gotten her arrested, began long prior to even the German occupation. But the personal connection makes the events more real for her in the same way discovering Stefan’s background did.

“After more than a year of occupation, Warsovians had recreated a peculiar sense of normality—a fragile homeostasis—which for most constituted relief, if not happiness.”

This desire for normality again surfaces, and in some ways the book seems to argue that our desire for normalcy does in fact deepen the oppression and contribute to the oppressors’ power. The average Warsovian was not happy under occupation, but the routine of it created a sense of normalcy that allowed them to ignore the atrocities happening around them.

“[Irena] mused that maybe in this unaccountable time, death was more desirable than life; only the living know what loss is, Irena thought. The dead want for nothing; they don’t need shoes.”

In a sense, this musing undermines the project and asks what, then, is the importance of life.“The dead want for nothing,” however, except perhaps life, and the living want the dead. The fundamental importance of this moment is the blurring of these lines—the horror of the era makes it possible for death to be preferable.

“There was no shortage of dying orphans, and no one missed them when they were gone.”

In a way, this excerpt also illustrates the perversion of a war-torn worldview. The experience of an orphan is bad enough, but in order to be saved, the orphan’s experience must get even worse, to the lowest point possible short of death. However, Irena used this mentality to filter orphans out of the ghetto, as their absences would be attributed to death.

“Ewa, a persistent optimist, accepted Schmuel’s conclusions, very much those of the SP and Judenrat, that the camps were for labor […] the Germans have all the power. Best to acquiesce to their demands rather than inflame a violent reaction. Ewa’s brother Adam came to exactly the opposite conclusion and was convinced the Germans meant to kill every Jew in Poland and that deportation meant death.”

Adam is, of course, correct, but it’s important to note that, for them, this was a legitimate debate. There were competing versions of events, and the master plan of the Nazis, genocide on that scale, was simply incomprehensible. Some look back and wonder why the Jews didn’t simply escape once it started happening; the Kansas students wonder that at several points. But a key part of that question is the supplemental question of when this was fully understood to be an extermination. For some, that knowledge only came as they were being executed.

“Was it not enough to murder Warsaw’s Jews, Irena thought? Why did the Germans feel compelled to compound their barbarity by dictating this gratuitous humiliation of pitting Jew against Jew?”

Pitting Jew against Jew is one of the things that made the Nazi effort as successful as it was, in the vein of “divide and conquer.” By pitting the oppressed against one another, it becomes more difficult for the oppressed to effectively resist. This highlights the difficulty of those who do resist, whether they resist peacefully, like Ewa and Irena, or violently, like Adam. To some extent, they are fighting on two fronts, not one.

“Another knocking on her office door brought Irena back to the moment. It was one of her secretaries, who gave her a typed form and a peculiar look. Irena closed the door and couldn’t help but wonder: What was the reward for betraying Irena Sendler?”

It is later revealed that most in the office knew what Irena was doing and tacitly supported her actions, even if they were unable to muster the strength to join her. However, this builds upon the same “divide and conquer” mentality—Irena has to worry not only about the Germans discovering her, but also that someone close might betray her when she’d least expect it. Her actions are risky in numerous ways, making it almost inevitable that she will be caught.

“Whoever remains silent in the face of murder becomes an accomplice of the murder. He who does not condemn, condones.”

 This is a succinct version of the argument of the book, and a repackaging of the maxim Irena’s father asked her to live by: no matter how insignificant we feel our efforts will be, we must try to help those in need. We are capable of effecting great change. But more than that, if we ignore our calling, it is as if we have joined the side of the oppressors.

“Zofia’s hand rested gently on Irena’s shoulder. ‘You and I, we’ll always be rescuing someone from the ghetto—however it may manifest itself in twenty or forty years.’”

There are two competing realizations packaged in this quote. First, the passage realizes a deeper truth about Irena, one she comes to recognize once the ghetto is leveled: she lives to help, and without that possibility, feels lost. Second, that to a certain extent, what is happening is, in fact, normal—it may not repeat exactly, but it will return, and people like Irena must be there to fight it.

“Megan held two photographs of Irena side by side, one young and beautiful with dark hair and determined eyes, dressed as a nurse, her disguise for entering the Warsaw ghetto, the other a white-haired elder with a black hairband […] How mysterious that this could be the same person. What was life like for each of these Irena Sendlers? What kind of life separated these two images?”

The framing of the book is a connection across time spanning 60 years, and the progression of the book slowly collapses those decades in order to bring Irena, Polish World War II hero, to the three Kansas high school students. In this passage, time is collapsed just for Irena, suggesting the multitudes of life in a way we don’t often think about them until we’re forced to reckon with the juxtaposition head-on.

“Megan stepped out of the TV van, not into the Warsaw ghetto, but into a small urban park in the cool morning air, an expansive silence and calm of contoured green. Megan supposed there were bones under her feet and no doubt many spirits. Yet it was just a park, like a park in any city, everything around her too normal, too peaceful to be the site of the unbelievable suffering she now knew so much about.”

This builds on the last passage exemplifying the passage of time, and how a single space can contain multitudes. Even on a personal level, had Megan visited prior to the project, she would have had no idea what the significance of that location was. But as she grows, her understanding of the world grows. Additionally, the “bones under her feet” and “many spirits” connects back to the earlier passage about the dead living among us as spirits in nature.

“If Auschwitz was a museum, an historic preservation, meant to attract and inform the world’s conscience, then Treblinka was an abstract memorial, a shrine of commemoration in the secret recess of a pine forest.”

Just as the events of the war suggest perspective and versions of truth, the book suggests differing ways of reproducing historical experience. This passage suggests ways of remembering. Auschwitz represents a direct confrontation with experience and memory, making it overt and inescapable. Whereas Treblinka suggests a recession of memory, as nature grows over the memorial. In a sense, the dead live on in the forest.

“Our experience of death is so that the people from the outside die, but we believe that we are exempt. We won’t die.”

This kind of revisionism helps to explain why many refused to accept the evidence in front of them that they were going to be deported and executed. People may want to believe that bad things happen in the abstract, not in the concrete—even as one experiences the bad, it is assumed to be anomalous.

“‘That’s what’s so important about what you’re doing,’ Mr. C. said. ‘Everybody has a story. But these people will take their remarkable stories to their graves if we don’t uncover them, write them down. That’s immortality. We humans—we’re storytellers […] It’s what history is.’”

The book continually wrestles with the role history has to play, and this passage offers a kind of answer. History preserves—not just the big picture but the smaller, individual stories, provided people seek and tell them.