A review by daniellepalmer1988
Irena's Children: A True Story of Courage by Tilar J. Mazzeo

5.0

This book reads like a fictional thriller, I had to keep reminding myself that it was non-fiction!! This book was heartbreaking! I have read many Holocaust memoirs and I am shocked I have never heard of Irena Sendler! What a remarkable woman... this was a book about her, along with 30 other co conspirators and their efforts to smuggle children out of the Warsaw ghetto and hide them on the Aryan side with falsified papers until the end of the war! They risked their lives and together saved around 2,500 children! This book mentioned so many people whose stories were so inspiring, or in one case despicable, I wish I could read books about them all! Dr. Janusz Korczak ran the orphanage in the Warsaw ghetto, and when the gestapo came to March all the children to the train depot which would take them to the gas chambers, he decided to go with the children to help bring a sense of calm in their final hours! He stayed with those children until the very end knowing he was voluntarily going to die as well!! This book also talked about Wiera Gran, a Jewish cabaret singer and gestapo informer who lured hundreds of her own people to their deaths!! This book didn’t sugar coat a thing... it was a devastating, eye opening read!