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    Irena's Children: The Extraordinary Story of the Woman Who Saved 2,500 Children from the Warsaw Ghetto
    Irena's Children: The Extraordinary Story of the Woman Who Saved 2,500 Children from the Warsaw Ghetto
    Irena's Children: The Extraordinary Story of the Woman Who Saved 2,500 Children from the Warsaw Ghetto
    Audiobook10 hours

    Irena's Children: The Extraordinary Story of the Woman Who Saved 2,500 Children from the Warsaw Ghetto

    Written by Tilar J. Mazzeo

    Narrated by Amanda Carlin

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    From the New York Times bestselling author of The Widow Clicquot comes an extraordinary and gripping account of Irena Sendler—the “female Oskar Schindler”—who took staggering risks to save 2,500 children from death and deportation in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II.

    In 1942, one young social worker, Irena Sendler, was granted access to the Warsaw ghetto as a public health specialist. While she was there, she began to understand the fate that awaited the Jewish families who were unable to leave. Soon she reached out to the trapped families, going from door to door and asking them to trust her with their young children. Driven to extreme measures and with the help of a network of local tradesmen, ghetto residents, and her star-crossed lover in the Jewish resistance, Irena ultimately smuggled thousands of children past the Nazis. She made dangerous trips through the city’s sewers, hid children in coffins, snuck them under overcoats at checkpoints, and slipped them through secret passages in abandoned buildings.

    But Irena did something even more astonishing at immense personal risk: she kept a secret list buried in bottles under an old apple tree in a friend’s back garden. On it were the names and true identities of these Jewish children, recorded so their families could find them after the war. She could not know that more than ninety percent of their families would perish.

    Irena’s Children, “a fascinating narrative of…the extraordinary moral and physical courage of those who chose to fight inhumanity with compassion” (Chaya Deitsch author of Here and There: Leaving Hasidism, Keeping My Family), is a truly heroic tale of survival, resilience, and redemption.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateSep 27, 2016
    ISBN9781508223726
    Author

    Tilar J. Mazzeo

    Tilar J. Mazzeo is the New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle bestselling author of books that include The Widow Clicquot, The Secret of Chanel No. 5, and Hotel on the Place Vendôme. She also writes on food and wine for the mainstream press, and her work has appeared in venues such as Food & Wine and in her Back-Lane Wineries guidebook series (Ten Speed Press). Her course on creative nonfiction (Great Courses), featured as in-flight viewing content on Virgin America airlines, is widely distributed and has made her a nationally prominent teacher of writing in nonfiction genres. The Clara C. Piper Associate Professor of English at Colby College, she divides her time among coastal Maine, New York City, and Saanichton, British Columbia, where she lives with her husband and stepchildren.

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    Reviews for Irena's Children

    4.5/5

    154 ratings14 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Great book although the person reading it was rather robotic making it a bit difficult to listen to.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Very very depressing, tragic. Sadly thease things are continuing to happen in this world at a smaller scale.
    • 5/5
      Slow at first but a compelling story. Probably better to read rather than the audio version.
    • 5/5
      a remarkable story of a very brave woman which also remembers many other brave souls who gave their lives and others their health in order to save the children
      Well read!!
    • 5/5
      A very powerful 4‘11“ woman. Brought to life the horrors of war in Warsaw Poland and the struggles of so many Jewish people. Very heart wrenching book A story of great humility.
    • 5/5
      Very well written and narrated. An extremely important story to tell. I was very moved by it.
    • 5/5
      That guy Hitler seem like a reasonable man dont you think?
    • 5/5
      Outstanding biography if Irena Sendler by a very good biographer who writes with clarity and suspense. This biography transcends history and even personality, to highlight morality and ethics.The author seamless intertwines these three themes perfectly.Since the author interviewed Irena, she had the option of writing in the first person instead of the third person. That brings the book to life without downgrading it to a historical fiction.There are abundant memorable statements by Irena throughout the book, many are standouts for quoting. Many were also life-changing for Irena.Although most of the main story ends in 1945, parts of it extend to 2016. Several events occurred during those later decades so it is worth reading past 1945 because those events reflect on the morality and leadership of those earlier years.
    • 5/5
      This is a very sad book about a very sad time in the lives to the Polish people. With WWII came the Germans and he holocaust. Warsaw was the city the Germans were going to use to hold back "the enemy" and it is the story of one woman, with the assistance of many other Poles, and he Jewish children they saved. The saved them in boxes from the Warsaw ghetto, from the streets, from the sewers. Wherever they could and hid them in convents, neighbors houses and out in the countryside. Irena kept a list showing the original Jewish names of the children and their new names. These children had to deny they were Jewish and learn the ways of their benefactors, Some had to become Catholic with did not sit well with the Orthodox Jews. Irena survived the drama, being beaten by the Gestapo and was considered for the Noble Peace Prize. She denied that she was a hero. In her mind she just did what had to be done.
    • 5/5
      This book goes a long way in answering the question I have heard many times ... "Why didn't more people help the Jews who were so badly persecuted and executed?" Of course there were several outstanding stories of those who understood the reality and risked everything to save many. But this book emphasizes that the heroes didn't act alone. Highly recommended reading - even if you feel like you have already read too much on this subject.
    • 5/5
      Before reading this book, I had heard of Irena Sendler. I’d read two children’s picture books about her: Irena's Jars of Secrets and Irena Sendler and the Children of the Warsaw Ghetto. Because they were written for children, they were sanitized and did not reveal the worst of the atrocities or many of the details of Irena’s life and the lives of her collaborators or the lives of the victims. I did not get even close to a full picture, though I’m glad there are books for children about this heroine. They were fine introductions and inspired me to learn more.I’ve read hundreds of Holocaust books, non-fiction and fiction. This one is non-fiction and it’s one of the very best books of its kind that I’ve read. I had no qualms about giving it 5 stars. It’s a splendid book, well written and brilliantly organized and expertly constructed. It’s incredibly dense with information, but always readable and engaging. I found it hard to put down, though at times it was extremely painful to read.I cannot stress enough how much I learned from this book. I got a better feel for the scope of the conditions inside the Warsaw Ghetto, Warsaw and Poland during WWII than I have from reading most other books about it, perhaps more than from any other book. I learned so much about Irena and her background that it made sense why she was as she was and why she did what she did. Many people I’d known about from reading other books make appearances and it was interesting to see how they were connected to each other, including to Irena. The book is well researched, with a fine explanation from the author about what few liberties she took (I found her and the book’s contents trustworthy!) and how she conducted her research. There are extensive notes and an impressive bibliography. I appreciated what photos were included and wish that there had been even more of them.It was a good time for me to read this book. Despite its serious and sometimes heartbreaking subject matter, I was fine with reading it over the holidays. I took courage from what these people went through. They and their situations made what trepidation I feel for what we’re facing later this month doable. I got courage from their willingness to do the right thing. This book could have been titled Dozens (maybe Hundreds) of People’s Children. So many participated in trying to save lives and so many were incredibly brave. I hope I would have the courage to do what's right, as might be required, over these next few years! Irena’s bravery and the bravery of those she worked with and the bravery of many other Poles, non-Jewish and Jewish, is so inspiring. They were remarkable people, and ordinary people. I could hope to be only a fraction as brave. There were so many heroes. Unfortunately, there were obviously a huge number of victims, but also so many that were saved, and that is inspiring. While it turned out that none of them were actually safe, they could certainly have protected themselves better than they did by not trying to help. I was particularly touched by those who had children of their own and risked so much to help other people’s children; their actions were life threatening for them and for their entire families. I did learn a lot about Warsaw throughout WWII and I’d never realized quite how in danger the Catholic and other non-Jewish Polish people were in, especially toward the end of the war. How could so many people be so brave (this book must be read to see just how almost superhuman bravery was exhibited time after time!) and how could so many people have acted so evilly? I was left more uplifted than in despair. One example of what fine storytelling this book has is one of the chapter titles led me to assume one thing, as does the way this book begins (with Irena’s arrest by the Gestapo) and because of that I’d assumed something, until I looked at the photos section in the middle of the book. But why that was done makes perfect sense. The reader follows Irena over time (through her triumphs and tragedies and challenges – with the full gamut of thoughts and emotions and experiences) and the presentation was not done gratuitously but in a way that I as a reader got a real sense of how it was for Irena and all the others, adults and children, non-Jews and Jews, people of all persuasions in this time and place. I honestly can’t imagine going through what Irena and many of her contemporaries did, and obviously what the Polish Jews had to endure in the ghetto and being sent to Treblinka or otherwise murdered, well I cannot imagine coping. Yes, there is much real life tragedy in this account, but the truly amazing efforts of so many who did what they could to save lives, of adults as well as a large number of children, left me feeling in awe. There is horrific content and there is a lot of suspense but it also has sweet and lovely and joyful parts.This is a timely book, telling a story that needed telling, and an excellent effort, and I highly recommend it.
    • 5/5
      In the midst of Warsaw during WWII, Irena Sendler set up a network to rescue Jewish children. She not only smuggled children from the ghetto, she sets up an extensive network to house the children and provided money for their support. This was an absolutely fascinating book. I had never heard of Irena before, and I read a lot of WWII novels. Despite great risk to herself, imprisonment and torture she never betrayed anyone around her. I hope that many will take inspiration from her determination and desire to help people. Overall, highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      Books like this one are not easy to read, and they shouldn't be. But, when well written, books like this can teach us a lot about how and why average men and women either went along with the masses, silent in the face of atrocities, or stayed true to their values, fought against the tide, and became heroes. This book is exceptionally well written.Tilar Mazzeo writes an engaging narrative. This is absolutely not a dry, textbook type of read. Mazzeo gives us emotion, passion, and insight. She lets us see and feel what the people involved experienced. We don't tackle the whole of WWII or even the whole of the Holocaust, but instead we witness the destruction of Poland and its people from the perspective of a handful of people. This story feels personal. This story hurts. But it also offers hope, because people like Irena are quietly living their lives all around us, and maybe, if we pay attention, we can learn something from them.*I was provided with an advance copy by the publisher, via NetGalley, in exchange for my honest review.*
    • 4/5
      Excellent story with lovely writing that is such a great addition to rounding out students' education about the heroes during the horrific events during World War II. I'm so happy to have this title to recommend to my students and their parents. It is amazing that I had not heard this story before and hope it reaches a wide audience!