The White Eagle

The humiliating defeat in the First World War followed by the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in 1920 completed the mortification of Germany at the hands of France and Great Britain. The seed for the Second World War was sowed soon after the First World War ended.

Shrewd political acumen and great oratory skills propelled Adolf Hitler to the status of the undisputed dictator of Germany in 1933. Hitler’s disregard for the Treaty of Versailles, determination of creating a greater Deutschland free of non-Aryan races gave birth to the idea of Lebensraum. His dream of restoring the lost glory of Germany led to a chain of events that ultimately led to Germany’s invasion of Poland which ultimately led to the Second World War.

In occupied Poland, the Jews were mercilessly ostracized. The Warsaw ghetto held more than 400,000 Jews. They were deprived of even the basic human rights and means of livelihood. Left to die of Typhus, forced labor, and starvation, those who survived were transported to the concentration camps, only to be exterminated in the gas chambers.

Over the ages whenever humans and human societies and pushed to the limits, God sends his messenger in different forms as savior. The central character of the novel was such an angel who put her life at stake to save a race from annihilation. Born in Otwock, Poland on February 15, 1910, Irena Sendler was a Polish Catholic social worker who along with nine of her associates smuggled Jewish children out of the ghetto and placed them with convents and foster families. She knocked on the Jewish doors in the Warsaw ghetto and in her own words, “tried to talk the mothers out of their children”. She risked her life and saved the lives of more than 2,500 children from imminent death and gave them a new life. The children saved by her are known as “Irena Sendler’s Children”.

Suspicion and betrayal led to her arrest on October 20, 1943. She was subjected to brutal physical and mental torture by the German Intelligence Agency, Gestapo, and SS for 100 days, but she did not divulge any information about her activities and associates. Finally, she was sentenced to death by the firing squad. Destiny, however, had other plans.

Incredibly, after the war, her heroism, like many others, was suppressed by Communist Poland and remained virtually unknown for nearly 60 years.

The White Eagle is a historical narrative based on the brave life of Irena Sendler – a Holocaust hero. While giving an insight into the events and the circumstances that lead to World War II, the story is a descriptive journey through the eventful life of one of the greatest custodians of humanity.