Irena's Children: A True Story of Courage - Softcover

Mazzeo, Tilar J

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1476778515 ISBN 13: 9781476778518

Publisher: Gallery Books, 2017

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Review:

"Irena s Children" weaves a fascinating narrative of a devastated city, Nazi depravity, and the extraordinary moral and physical courage of those who chose to fight inhumanity with compassion. This is a book that stays with you long after you've turned the last page. --Chaya Deitsch, author of Here and There: Leaving Hasidism, Keeping My Family"

"An important, often harrowing, and until now little known story of the Holocaust: how thousands of children were rescued from the Warsaw ghetto by a Polish woman of extraordinary daring and moral courage."--Joseph Kanon, author of Leaving Berlin

Praise for"Irena's Children"
Irena Sendler s rescue of thousands of Jewish children from murderous Germanhands is one of the most remarkable tales of righteous courage, resourcefulness, and wile to come out of the Holocaust, and Tilar Mazzeo s eloquent telling of that story is remarkable as well. By plumbing Sendler s memoirs and testimonies and interviewing the now-elderly children she saved, Mazzeo has put together an almost granular record of the cruel madness of the Warsaw Ghetto and the astonishing feats of deception it took to help a small portion of its doomed residents survive. Even if you have read volumes on the Holocaust, you will find this book harrowing, surprising, and riveting. --Jospeh Berger, longtime reporter for The New York Times and author of Displaced Persons: Growing Up American After the Holocaust"

Irena s Children weaves a fascinating narrative of a devastated city, Nazi depravity, and the extraordinary moral and physical courage of those who chose to fight inhumanity with compassion. This is a book that stays with you long after you've turned the last page. --Chaya Deitsch, author of Here and There: Leaving Hasidism, Keeping My Family"

Praise forIrena's Children
Irena Sendler s rescue of thousands of Jewish children from murderous Germanhands is one of the most remarkable tales of righteous courage, resourcefulness, and wile to come out of the Holocaust, and Tilar Mazzeo s eloquent telling of that story is remarkable as well. By plumbing Sendler s memoirs and testimonies and interviewing the now-elderly children she saved, Mazzeo has put together an almost granular record of the cruel madness of the Warsaw Ghetto and the astonishing feats of deception it took to help a small portion of its doomed residents survive. Even if you have read volumes on the Holocaust, you will find this book harrowing, surprising, and riveting. --Joseph Berger, longtime reporter for The New York Times and author of Displaced Persons: Growing Up American After the Holocaust"

"Irena s Children weaves a fascinating narrative of a devastated city, Nazi depravity, and the extraordinary moral and physical courage of those who chose to fight inhumanity with compassion. This is a book that stays with you long after you've turned the last page. --Chaya Deitsch, author of Here and There: Leaving Hasidism, Keeping My Family"

Irena Sendler s rescue of thousands of Jewish children from murderous Germanhands is one of the most remarkable tales of righteous courage, resourcefulness, and wile to come out of the Holocaust, and Tilar Mazzeo s eloquent telling of that story is remarkable as well. By plumbing Sendler s memoirs and testimonies and interviewing the now-elderly children she saved, Mazzeo has put together an almost granular record of the cruel madness of the Warsaw Ghetto and the astonishing feats of deception it took to help a small portion of its doomed residents survive. Even if you have read volumes on the Holocaust, you will find this book harrowing, surprising, and riveting. --Joseph Berger, longtime reporter for The New York Times and author of Displaced Persons: Growing Up American After the Holocaust"

"Irena Sendler's rescue of thousands of Jewish children from murderous German hands is one of the most remarkable tales of righteous courage, resourcefulness, and wile to come out of the Holocaust, and Tilar Mazzeo's eloquent telling of that story is remarkable as well. By plumbing Sendler's memoirs and testimonies and interviewing the now-elderly children she saved, Mazzeo has put together an almost granular record of the cruel madness of the Warsaw Ghetto and the astonishing feats of deception it took to help a small portion of its doomed residents survive. Even if you have read volumes on the Holocaust, you will find this book harrowing, surprising, and riveting."--Joseph Berger, longtime reporter for The New York Times and author of Displaced Persons: Growing Up American After the Holocaust

"Irena's Children weaves a fascinating narrative of a devastated city, Nazi depravity, and the extraordinary moral and physical courage of those who chose to fight inhumanity with compassion. This is a book that stays with you long after you've turned the last page."--Chaya Deitsch, author of Here and There: Leaving Hasidism, Keeping My Family

-Irena Sendler's rescue of thousands of Jewish children from murderous German hands is one of the most remarkable tales of righteous courage, resourcefulness, and wile to come out of the Holocaust, and Tilar Mazzeo's eloquent telling of that story is remarkable as well. By plumbing Sendler's memoirs and testimonies and interviewing the now-elderly children she saved, Mazzeo has put together an almost granular record of the cruel madness of the Warsaw Ghetto and the astonishing feats of deception it took to help a small portion of its doomed residents survive. Even if you have read volumes on the Holocaust, you will find this book harrowing, surprising, and riveting.---Joseph Berger, longtime reporter for The New York Times and author of Displaced Persons: Growing Up American After the Holocaust

About the Author:

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Gallery Books
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1476778515
• ISBN 13: 9781476778518
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352