Irena Sendler was born Irena Krzyżanowska on February 15, 1910, in Otwock, Poland. In 1931 Sendler married Mieczysław Sendler, and the couple moved to Warsaw before the outbreak of World War II. In Warsaw, Sendler became a social worker, overseeing the city’s “canteens,” which provided assistance to people in need. When the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, Sendler and her colleagues also used the canteens to provide medicine, clothing and other necessities to the city’s...