Life in a Jar: The Irena Sendler Project

With Poland’s surrender, Stefan returns to Warsaw and Irena resumes her home visits for work. As the two walk together, they see “two men [cutting] gray meat from a dead horse” (84). Irena notes that the meat might be tainted; Stefan responds: “It might not be tainted. Starving people will eat almost anything” (84). Polish radio and mainstream publications had gone silent two weeks earlier, but underground radio from Berlin, Moscow, London, and Paris were still coming into Warsaw, with each reporting “a different war” (85).

Irena’s mother returns to their apartment. One night, Janina is looking through old photographs when Irena joins her. Looking at one of their family, she tells Irena that she misses Irena’s father and “just want[s] to die peacefully” (85).

On September 28, 1939, Germany takes control and begins a series of rapid-fire decrees that slowly erode the rights of the Jewish population. By the beginning of October, the Wehrmacht has arrived. On October 5, Adolph Hitler arrives “to celebrate [the German] victory” (86), although civilians either avoid the Germans or watch through their windows.

The Germans’ first official act is “one of kindness; the army [doles] out warm soup and black bread” (86). As Stefan and Irena pass a soup line, someone further back accuses someone toward the front of being Jewish. Two SS officers pull the people out of the line; Irena wants to help, but Stefan tells her to keep walking. Moments later, the SS officers shoot the Jewish couple.

This makes Irena think of “her parents’ injunction to stand up for those treated unjustly” (87). She recalls a classmate from her school days, Rachela, the only Jewish girl in her class. One day, two larger girls attacked Rachela; without thinking, Irena stepped in to help. A right-wing teacher promised her she would be punished, but after describing the incident to another teacher, she was told she did the right thing and was let go: “After this incident some students became openly hostile to Irena, calling her ‘Jew slave’ and “Rachela’s secret sister’” (88).

Later, toward the end of high school, the same right-wing teacher, “Pika,” tried to fail her for a paper she wrote arguing that “growing political chaos and the splintering of parties, accompanied by inflation, led to the scapegoating of minorities by the nationalist right” (88). A failure would have prevented her from moving on to university: “In the course of her research, Irena read everything she could about anti-Semitism in Poland. She was bewildered by the conflicting reasons given for loathing the Jews, often by the same parties or groups” (88). Another instructor once again saved her, Headmaster Pan Wyszinski, who replaced her grade with a B+. However, he also warned her that “[m]any academics at Warsaw University share [Pika’s] political views” (89), telling her she shouldn’t step out of line.

Nevertheless, at university, she did. Students and professors, in part due to Hitler’s rhetoric, became openly hostile toward Jewish students, throwing one “Jewish girl through a second story window”(90), after which the university did nothing. Jews were made to sit on separate benches in classes, and their exam books were marked “JEW.” Irena began sitting with the Jewish students and writing “JEW” on her own exam books. As a result, she was suspended from the university.

Back with Stefan in Warsaw, the two argue over the couple. Irena argues that she “can’t be a bystander” (91). Stefan responds that in university, “it meant a disciplinary suspension, now it means a bullet in your head” (91).

Upon arriving at work, she discovers from someone that five buildings were forced out, suddenly, at gunpoint. Irena takes the man to see Jan, who repeats that he cannot tell the Germans what to do and cannot do anything himself. Irena believes that Jan is correct but is acting harshly toward the man; she “[shares] his frustration and maybe his anxiety as well, with how quickly conditions in Warsaw had deteriorated. And there [is] little any of them could do about it” (92).

Irena continues to seek out information about her husband. She and Mietek had grown up together and gone to the same university; they had married in 1931, shortly before her suspension: “Ironically, their marriage’s demise began as a stroke of good fortune for Mietek” (93), who was offered a teaching position in another city. He assumed she would join him, but she declined, choosing instead to focus on social work and overturning her university suspension: “In the end, Mietek went to Poznan. He wanted a wife; Irena wanted to change the world” (93). In early October, Irena receives a letter from Mietek, who is a prisoner of war.

German decrees continue to erode the rights of Jews in Warsaw. By the end of October, Jews have had their bank accounts frozen, their wages minimized, and their benefits forbidden. They are also obliged to work in “forced labor teams” (94).When Irena visits Ewa one day, Ewa’s brother Adam instead answers the door, and they meet for the first time. When Ewa appears and Adam disappears, Ewa tells Irena that her brother had been picked randomly up a few days earlier for forced labor. The worst part of it, she tells Irena, was the humiliation: “He said he would kill them. He means it. I see it in his eyes” (95).

Also in October, the first barbed wire enclosures begin to appear, closing off the Jewish population: “Despite the Germans’ obsessive fear of contagion and disease, especially typhus, they had created in the Jewish district the ideal conditions for pestilence […] overcrowding, poor sanitation, rodents, and malnutrition” (96). Irena accompanies Jan to a meeting with the head of the German Epidemic Control Authority, who argues that “Jews in particular carry and spread typhus” (96), putting Warsaw at risk if not for quarantine. Irena thinks that his “idiocy would cost lives—but maybe that was the point” (96). However, she also realizes that the Germans’ fear of typhus and tuberculosis provides an opportunity for her to help her clients.

On October 20, 1939, a decree is issued that all radios must be surrendered. However, Irena convinces her mother not to give theirs up, but instead to hide it in the attic, as she believes it might be useful one day.

Stefan, who walks Irena home most days for safety, begins to attend underground meetings of the Polish Socialist Party. Prior to the war, they used to argue about such meetings, and he again claims that it’s “[a] lot of talking. Something Jews and Socialists do all the time” (98). She chastises him, saying that he can pick on socialists because he is one, but that he shouldn’t speak ill of Jews. He responds by taking out his papers to show her the “JUDE” stamp. As it turns out, his family was Jewish, but converted to Christianity when he was a child; however, the Germans found out and still consider him to be Jewish. He remarks that he is “a chameleon, changing form Jew to Evangelical and now to Jew again” (100). Stefan continues: “I’m thinking of changing yet again. Maybe next time I’ll be a Catholic” (100).

By the end of November, all Jews are required to wear armbands with the Star of David on them, and all Jewish shops must likewise place the star at the entrance. Stefan’s newly forged papers allow him to avoid the armband, but those with armbands face severe mistreatment and violence. In December, a new spate of decrees is issued: selling bread at higher-than-pre-war prices will result in execution; Jewish schools are closed; prayer in synagogues is forbidden; and secret radios, like the one Irena hid, become punishable by death. Food rations also begin:“Germans receives 2,613 calories daily. Jews only 184; the only way Jews could stay alive was to buy black market or stolen food at five to ten times pre-war prices” (102).