A nurse, Irena Sendler, is credited with rescuing over 2,500 Jews from the Warsaw ghetto.
Head of the children’s section of Zegota – a secret organization that was a ‘Council to Aid Jews’. Her actions aroused the attention of the Gestapo, and in 1943 she was arrested, tortured, and sentenced to death. A bribe saved her life, but nonetheless she was left unconscious in a forest, with both her arms and legs broken.