Overview

During World War II, Irena Sendler, a Polish Catholic social worker, organized a rescue network of fellow social workers to save 2,500 Jewish children from certain death in the Warsaw ghetto. Incredibly, after the war her heroism, like that of many others, was suppressed by communist Poland and remained virtually unknown for sixty years. Unknown, that is, until three high school girls from an economically depressed, rural school district in southeast Kansas stumbled upon a tantalizing reference to Sendler's rescues, which they fashioned into a history project, a play they called Life in a Jar. Their innocent drama was first seen in Kansas, then the Midwest, then New York, Los Angeles, Montreal, and finally Poland, where they elevated Irena Sendler to a national hero, championing her legacy of tolerance and respect for all people. Life in a Jar: The Irena Sendler Project is a Holocaust history and more. It is the inspirational story of Protestant students from Kansas, each called in her own complex way to the history of a Catholic woman who knocked on Jewish doors in the Warsaw ghetto and, in Sendler's own words, tried to talk the mothers out of their children.

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9781982667986

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A gripping real-life tale of extraordinary courage that had an enduring impact.-- Kirkus

Author Information

Jack Mayer is a pediatrician and a writer. He began practicing pediatrics in 1976 in Enosburg Falls, Vermont, a small town in eastern Franklin County on the Canadian border. His was the first pediatric practice in that half of the county. He was a country doctor there for ten years, often bartering medical care for eggs, firewood, and knitted afghans. From 1987 to 1991 Dr. Mayer was a National Cancer Institute Fellow at Columbia University School of Public Health in New York City, researching the molecular biology of childhood cancer. Most of his scientific writing was done during those four years. He was also an academic pediatrician at Columbia University's Presbyterian Medical Center. Dr. Mayer returned to Vermont in 1991 and established Rainbow Pediatrics in Middlebury, Vermont, where he continues to practice primary care pediatrics. He is an instructor in pediatrics at the University of Vermont School of Medicine and an adviser for premedical students at Middlebury College. Throughout his career, Dr. Mayer has written short stories, poems, and essays about his years in pediatric practice and hiking The Long Trail in Vermont. He was a participant at Middlebury College's Bread Loaf Writers' Conference in 2003 and 2005 for fiction, and in 2008 for poetry. He lives in Middlebury, Vermont. Patrick Lawlor, an actor, director, and combat choreographer, is an Earphones Award-winning narrator.

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