“Why do I have to be Jewish,” a young girl asks Irena Sendler in the latest “Hallmark Hall of Fame” presentation. “What if I want to be something else? I don’t like to be hated by everybody.”
Assured that not everyone hates her, the young girl remains unconvinced: “Yes, it’s true. What did we [Jews] ever do?”
This is one of several poignant moments that raise “The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler” far above typical movie-of-the-week fare. A true story about a Polish Catholic woman who risked her own life to rescue Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto, the two-hour drama airs Sunday, April 19 on CBS.
It’s 1941. There are 440,000 Jews confined behind the 10-foot walls; hundreds die of starvation and disease every day. Sendler (Anna Paquin) worked for the Warsaw Social Services Department and used that cover to get into the ghetto, each time bringing a little food, an article of clothing, occasionally managing to get a child out.
She hears what the Nazis have planned and tries to warn her Jewish friends. But as so many Jews did, they couldn’t grasp the unfathomable. “Who can believe it,” one says. “These are cultured people.”
But Sendler believes in the Nazis’ potential for evil, and feels guilty because she doesn’t do more. “I thought I was doing all I could, but the truth is I’m doing nothing,” she bemoans. “One child is not enough.”
So she sets up a system to smuggle infants and children out of the ghetto and into homes and convents of sympathetic Polish Christians. Ironically, one of the biggest obstacles she faces is the Jewish parents themselves. Understandably, some don’t want to part with their children. Others refuse to believe their lives are in danger. And there are some afraid their children will be converted.
Ultimately, with the cooperation of Zagota (the children’s division of the Polish Underground), Sendler is able to smuggle 2,500 children out — incognito. She kept the names of each of the children on slips of paper in jars she buried in a hiding place.
Sendler was arrested after a member of her underground railroad gave her up while being tortured. But though both her legs were broken, Sendler never revealed anything. She was due to be executed, but guards were bribed and she was able to escape. She continued to work with Zagota until the end of the war.
In the mid-1960s, organizations such as the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous recognized her work and began providing her with financial assistance. She was among some 180 people nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 (the award was shared that year between Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and died last year at the age of 98.
The cast — including Goran Visnjic as a Jewish friend Sendler met in college and fell in love with, and Marcia Gay Harden as her mother — is uniformly excellent. And the film itself works on many levels, including as a tearjerker.
It is a film, also, about that rare breed of person who is willing to stand up for what is right regardless of the danger. And it is a reminder, too, how dangerous it can be to blindly label a people.
Another Polish woman named Irena who saved people in World War II, Irena Gut Opdyke, is currently being celebrated on Broadway in the show “Irena’s Vow” starring Tovah Feldshuh.
Whether we learn about it via the stage or TV screen, it is comforting to know that in the midst of all the madness, there was righteousness, as well.
Curt Schleier is editor in chief of www.tvsoundoff.com and www.film soundoff.com.
“The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler” airs 9 p.m. Sunday, April 19, on CBS.