Life in a Jar: The Irena Sendler Project

The girls give their first full performance of Life in a Jar to the Children of the Holocaust Association of Poland. At the start of the meeting, the survivors and rescuers who attend the group’s monthly meetings introduce themselves. The chairperson, Zofia Zaks, explains to the girls that “many heroic Poles are still hesitant about revealing their histories” due to “the long shadow of Communism”(271-272), while others have no idea that they were in fact Jewish children who were rescued during the war. She also notes that, even though communism has fallen, antisemitism still exists—yet another reason few know of Irena’s heroism or discuss the Holocaust.

The girls perform and receive a standing ovation from those able to stand, “while others [clap] from their wheelchairs” (273). One woman asks what happened to Irena’s lists, a question that the girls are hoping to answer during their visit, as they still do not know, themselves. Afterwards, the girls offer gifts to the Association and talk with the survivors about their experiences. Many have stories about antisemitism from both during the war and after the war. One tells of how many Jews had been Bolsheviks and were therefore blamed for the arrival of communism; another tells of returning to Poland after the war to be handed a labor certificate stamped “with the letter ‘J’ for Jew” (273-274). Unwittingly, the girls meet with several survivors whose stories were discussed in Part 2, including Piotr Zysman Zettinger, who tells Liz about “the best bath [he] ever had” (275).

Following their meeting at the Association, the girls are given a tour of Nozyk Synagogue, where they “share the lunch that [is] offered every day to impoverished Jewish senior citizens” (277). However, the girls eat “very little,” instead talking “non-stop with those sitting near them” (277). In the afternoon, the girls return to the hotel where they discuss the sadness of the stories they heard. Megan tells of how she stopped taking notes at one point so that she could just listen but now worries that those stories will be lost as a result. Liz describes two interviewees who didn’t want to be recognized publicly at all. They all note how much the survivors wanted to share their stories with someone.

The girls also begin to feel uncomfortable with the amount of attention they’re getting, and Liz vocalizes this: “I mean, Irena is the hero, not us” (279). When they take their complaint to Mr. C., he points out that their “mission is to tell Irena’s story […] Sometimes you tell it with the play and sometimes you tell it through all those reporters asking the same questions over and over” (279). He then gives them a folder filled with copies of the letters and emails that brought them to this point, which he had brought along to help them lift their spirits if things ever get too tough.

That evening, the girls and their families go to a dinner party at Bieta’s apartment held in their honor. Bieta reiterates that many of the children Irena saved have no idea that they were rescued at all: “During the war no one talked about it—such information could cost the lives of a rescuer’s entire family […] After the war, under Communism one did not admit to saving Jews” (281). Bieta herself did not learn the truth until she was 17. After dinner, among her many books, Bieta shows the children her “greatest treasure” (282), the engraved silver spoon which is all she has left of her parents.

Their next trip is to Auschwitz: “They had read the books, seen the diagrams, the photographs, knew of the cruel selection that occurred at the unloading platforms, but here was three-dimensional reality, buildings, barbed wire, artifacts” (285). As they had in the museum, the girls separate and take in the horrors in their own way. The reconstructed barracks get to Sabrina, as the close quarters remind her of her own experiences in poverty. She begins to sob; again, as they had in the museum, the girls comfort one another. At the end of the experience, Megan tells Mr. C. that she feels like she is beginning to understand what Irena means when she writes that she regrets not being able to save more.

The next day, the girls visit another death camp, Treblinka, where Warsaw’s Jews were murdered. This is a different experience: “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” (287). They are taken to a tall memorial “surrounded by a ring of 17,000 stones of different sizes and colors,” which they are told represents “the number of Jewish communities destroyed in the Holocaust” (287). They do not, however, see the only stone with a person’s name on it: Janusz Korczak, the pediatrician who ran the orphanage in Warsaw, who insisted on accompanying the children to Treblinka.

The next day, Professor Jacek Leociak takes them on a walking tour of the ghetto. He begins by describing the size of the ghetto in more concrete terms and numbers, but then reminds them that “[t]hese are cold numbers—something of the mind” (288), rather than experiential. Before they embark, he has them watch Nazi film footage of the ghetto, reminding them that the film “is not neutral” (289), that it is meant to mock and persecute. As they move on, he explains that the ghetto itself contained classes: “Every Jew is condemned to the same fate, but before the deportations began, they are living very different levels of life” (289). As they walk, Professor Leociak shows them photographs of the ghetto as it existed then, allowing them to compare the photographs to what they see in front of them; as before, things look different for the students.

Megan asks the professor when the Jews of Warsaw knew they were going to die, thinking of the families who wouldn’t give up their children. Even this question is complicated. He tells them when the first messages began to filter in, of the limited nature of that information, and the uncertainty of it among many of Warsaw’s Jews: “Our experience of death is so that the people from outside die, but we believe that we are exempt. We won’t die” (291). Sabrina asks why more Jews didn’t try to escape. Professor Leociak explains that for many, it was safer inside the ghetto than on the Aryan side. Finally, he takes them to the remnants of Pawiak Prison. He asks the girls if they want to know how Irena escaped.

Children under 14 are not permitted in Pawiak Prison due to its disturbing nature; Mr. C. suggests that Irena may not write about it because she may not want to be reminded of it. The professor hands them off to Maria Wierzbicka, who is to guide them through Pawiak. They descend “down the ramp underground into a dim, stone-walled silence—a chill and damp waiting area” (295). She brings them to a reconstructed cell, one like the kind in which Irena would have been held; she shows them a hole in the door known as “the Jew hole,” in which the guards “would put their pistol to [and] randomly shoot into a crowded cell” (296).

Irena dictated her experience to be read to the girls by Maria, as the memory is too painful for her. The day she thought she would die, she was taken to Szucha #25 along with 10 to 15 other women. She “had no doubt that [she] would be shot that morning,” but felt by then that “Death would be a relief” (297), not least of all because it removed the risk that she would break down and reveal valuable information. Once inside, she was brought through a different door than the rest of the women. The German officer who had brought her in dismissed the guard, unlocked a door that led into an alleyway, then took her to a quiet street, telling her that she is free and to leave as quickly as she could.

She went to a nearby pharmacy where she fortunately encountered a sympathetic pharmacist who cleaned her up and gave her new clothes. After leaving, she found a tram to take home. Shortly after, a newspaper boy informed everyone that the Gestapo was checking papers at the next street, papers Irena did not have. She managed to get on another tram and made her way home to her mother.

Irena later discovered that ZEGOTA had bribed the officer who let her go; a few weeks later, he was arrested and executed. The Germans listed her name on the posters of those who had been executed the day before. As they leave, Liz feels the weight of the experience on her. She resolves that “at each subsequent performance, when she [plays] Irena, she [will] remember Pawiak” (300).

The next day, the girls finish their walking tour, then are taken to meet Professor Glowinski, an author who was rescued by Irena when he was 8 years old. Professor Glowinski tells his story while Professor Leociak translates, showing the girls on a map the locations being described. He concludes by telling them that, despite the number of people Irena rescued, she has almost been forgotten, meaning that the girls are now “rescu[ing] the rescuer” (302).

Their last visit is with Hanna, Jaga’s daughter, who still lives at the same address she did as a child. The house is covered with holes from machine-gun bullets; Hanna explains that most people chose to fill in the holes, but she and her husband, an artist, chose to keep them as a memorial. Liz asks about the lists; Hanna, unfortunately, does not know what happened to them, but takes them to the apple tree where they were buried. As they walk through the narrow passages that lead to it, Hanna points out the various houses and tells them how many children were hidden in each one. At the end of their visit, Hanna gives them a replica of one of the jars Irena might have used and asks them to use it in their play.