Irena Sendler is a Catholic social worker who has sympathized with the Jews since her childhood, when her physician father died of typhus contracted while treating poor Jewish patients. When she initially proposes saving Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto, her idea is met with skepticism by fellow workers, her parish priest, and even her own mother Janina.
The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler is a 2009 television film directed by John Kent Harrison. The teleplay by Harrison and Lawrence John Spagnola, based on the 2007 biography Die Mutter der Holocaust-Kinder: Irena Sendler und die geretteten Kinder aus dem Warschauer Ghetto, focuses on Irena Sendler, a Polish social worker who smuggled approximately 2,500 Jewish children to safety during World War II.
