She smuggled 2,500 children out of the Warsaw Ghetto, one jar of names at a time

Irena Sendler used her cover as a social worker checking for typhus to smuggle more than 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto, hidden in toolboxes, sacks and ambulances. She recorded each child's real name on scraps of paper, sealed them in jars, and buried them under an apple tree so families could someday be reunited. The Gestapo tortured her nearly to death in 1943, but she survived, and the jars were dug up after the war.

— Jack Mayer, Life in a Jar: The Irena Sendler Project — 2011
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