Winner Best Documentary Audience Award, UK Jewish Film Festival 2010

This is the story of a group of young Polish women, some barely out of their teens, who outwitted the Nazis during World War II. When 29-year-old social worker Irena Sendler saw the suffering of Warsaw's Jews, she reached out to her most trusted colleagues for help. Together, they rescued over 2,500 Jewish children by forging identification papers and placing them in Catholic safe houses and orphanages in Warsaw and the Polish countryside.

They were taking an enormous risk. Ruthless blackmailers and Gestapo agents were constantly on the lookout for Jews who had escaped the ghetto walls. Children suspected of being Jewish were quizzed on Catholic culture, their lives dependent upon concealing their heritage. Several rescued children give moving accounts of their confusion, resentment, and sense of abandonment after assuming their Catholic identities.

In her late 90s when interviewed for the film, Irena Sendler's straightforward account of her life and works is both humbling and inspiring. She vividly recalls her brush with death in a Gestapo prison, and her continued harassment by authorities in post-war Communist Poland. This film expertly captures the will and character of the women of the resistance against the backdrop of occupied Poland.

Producer: Mary Skinner, Piotr Piwowarczyk
Production Year: 2011
Copyright Year: 2011
Director: Mary Skinner
Narrator: Jan Becker
Talent: Irena Sendler
Discs: 1
Subtitles: Y
Subtitle Language: English (SDH)
Audio Format: Stereo
Aspect Ratio: 16x9 Widescreen