The Librarian Who Couldn't Stay Quiet

In 1943, Irena Sendler worked as a social worker in Warsaw, carrying a special permit that allowed her to enter the Jewish ghetto to inspect sanitary conditions. She could have done her job, filed her reports, and gone home each evening to safety. No one would have blamed her. The permit was meant for inspecting pipes, not smuggling children.

But Irena understood something about her peculiar access. She was one of the few people in all of Warsaw who could walk through those guarded gates without suspicion. So she began sedating infants with small doses of medicine and hiding them in toolboxes, suitcases, and even coffins loaded onto her truck. She tucked toddlers under piles of rags. She coached older children to act sick so they could leave in ambulances. Over fourteen months, she smuggled out approximately 2,500 Jewish children, recording each child's real name in glass jars buried beneath an apple tree so families might one day reunite.

Irena did not choose to be born Polish. She did not arrange her own work permit. She did not design the ghetto's layout with its blind spots. But when she recognized the convergence of her position, her access, and the desperate need before her, she understood that silence would be its own verdict.

Mordecai's question to Esther still pierces every comfortable conscience: Who knows whether you have come to your position for such a time as this? Providence does not place us where we are by accident. The access you carry — your influence, your relationships, your particular seat at the table — may be the very corridor through which deliverance walks.