Irena Sendler, a Polish catholic, is a true heroine who saved the lives of 2,500 Jewish children during the Holocaust, died on 12 May 2008 at the age of 98. Sendler smuggled thousands of Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto between October 1940 and April 1943.

Along with a team of about twenty volunteers she was able to rescue the children by carrying them out in suitcases, boxes, body bags, tool boxes and coffi ns. She gave them new identities and placed them with adoptive parents.