Where did Irena Sendler grow up and live?

📍6 Ludwiki Street, Czyste district, Warsaw 01-226, Poland

1935 – 1943

“I was born in Warsaw in 1910 and I lived there through the German occupation, working as a social worker with access to the Warsaw Ghetto. Between 1942 and 1943 I organised a network that smuggled approximately 2,500 Jewish children out of the ghetto — hidden in ambulances, in coffins, in suitcases, under coats, in any way that presented itself. I kept their names and their new identities written on thin paper hidden in jars buried under an apple tree in my garden, so that after the war they might be reunited with surviving family members. I was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943, tortured, and sentenced to death, but was rescued by the Polish Underground. I survived the war and spent the rest of my life in Warsaw, working as a social worker, rarely speaking of what I had done until the last years of my life when the world finally learned about it.”

👍 LovedThe network of colleagues and friends who shared the risk and made the rescues possible — I could not have done it alone. The children themselves, whose lives were the whole point of everything.

👎 DislikedThe torture and the constant fear of discovery. The knowledge that for every child I saved there were others I could not reach in time. The losses — colleagues arrested, children recaptured — that accompanied every success.

Map showing where Irena Sendler lived — 6 Ludwiki Street, Czyste district, Warsaw 01-226, Poland

🗺️ Approximate location today

Street view of Irena Sendler's home at 6 Ludwiki Street, Czyste district, Warsaw 01-226, Poland

📍 Street view today

Sources: Mayer, M. The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler (2009), SB Publishing; Mazzeo, T. Irena's Children (2016), Gallery Books; Yad Vashem Righteous Among the Nations archives