Life in a Jar: The Irena Sendler Project - Essay Example

I promised myself to never let anyone undergo what I had. Then in college, I read about Irena Sendler’s project of saving thousands of children from the Nazis in Germany. I never thought twice about my career choice; and I dedicated my life to social work. Selflessness is one trait required in social work. I possess the trait, but in Sendler’s case, hers was in abundance. She reserved the choice of going about her daily Polish life without brushing against the dangerous Nazi regime, but the love for children’s safety and wellbeing took the better of her.

She remains one of the biggest rescuers in the world today, having saved thousands of lives single-handedly without using force, but only using her passionate skills in social work. So great was her act that the people who unearthed the truth about it had first approached it as a typo that a book publisher had made; the four Uniontown High School students thought she had saved two-hundred and fifty children and not the stipulated two-thousand five hundred. Further research, was, however, quick to justify that the frail and humble Irena Sendler had indeed outwitted the Nazi regime and saved the lives of over two-thousand five hundred children (Mayer, 2011 p. 11). The core principle of social work as defined by Sendler lies in not being discriminatory.

As she explained to the students Megan Stewart, Sabrina Coons, Jessica Shelton, and Elizabeth Cambers, “My parents taught me that if a man is drowning, it is irrelevant what is his religion or nationality. One must help him” (p. 51). This statement is seemingly the fuel she needed to begin her 18 months of service that would emerge to shock the world 60 years later. Her father had also been a social worker who had dedicated his life in caring for Jews suffering from the typhus epidemic. He died from the same disease he was helping the people from. Sendler