“My mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’”

Largely unknown to history, Irena Sendler has been called the “female Oskar Schindler” for her incredibly brave work during World War II that results in literally thousands of saved lives.

Sendler, whose father was a doctor and showed her from the beginning the sacredness of human life, and the nobility of protecting those lives, used her position as a social worker in Nazi-occupied Poland to save about 2,500 children’s lives by smuggling them out of the country to safety. Most extraordinarily of all, she kept incredibly detailed records of each child so that they could be reunited with their families after the war.

Farrell tells Irena’s story from the beginning — how she was raised by a caring and compassionate man who went out of his way to help the needy and rarely accepted payment for his medical services. After marrying young, she defied expectations and went to university, where she fell in with a group of resistance fighters. They taught her how to use her job as a social worker to manipulate the Nazis — as the Nazis forced the Jewish people of Poland into ghettos, Sendler was sent in by Nazis soldiers to monitor for infectious disease. She would then flag the most vulnerable — often children — as contagious, have them carted away in ambulances and then find ways to smuggle them out of the city. Through her ever-evolving network, Sendler and her fellow resistance fighters snuck children out of Poland in coffins or toolboxes, through sewers or other underground passages, and even drugged infants to make them sleep and walked past checkpoint with them tucked into her overcoat. Sendler paid heavy prices for her actions — she was arrested, tortured, and almost executed for her participation in the resistance. But throughout that time she kept her secrets and continued to do everything in her power to save as many children as possible.

This book was a tough read, as anything involving the Holocaust will be. But Sendler’s intelligence and strength shine through the pages, and the impact of what she managed to do is incredible.