Irena Sendler, 98; Saved Children in WWII

Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Israel, recognized Mrs. Sendler in 1965 as "Righteous Among the Nations," the designation for gentiles who aided Jews during the war. The number of children saved by Mrs. Sendler and her partners is unknown, according to Yad Vashem, but some estimates by survivors groups claim more than 2,500.

In 1995, Mrs. Sendler told the British newspaper the Express that she remained devastated by conversations with Jewish families whose children she tried to help.

"We witnessed terrible scenes," she said. "Father agreed but mother didn't. Grandmother cuddled the child tenderly and, weeping bitterly, said, 'I won't give away my grandchild at any price.

"We sometimes had to leave those unfortunate families without taking their children from them. I'd go back there the next day and often found that everyone had been taken to the Umschlagplatz railway siding for transport to the death camps."

Irena Krzyzanowska was born in Warsaw on Feb. 15, 1910, and was raised in the suburb of Otwock.

She attributed her interest in social justice to her father, a doctor who died treating poor Jewish patients during a typhus epidemic in 1917. She graduated from the University of Warsaw before turning to social work.

After World War II, Mrs. Sendler lived in relative obscurity and struggled financially under the Communist regime while remaining in social work.

Coverage of her wartime role appeared in news articles and in the Marek Halter documentary "Tzedek: The Righteous" (1994). But it was a touring play about her life, "Life in a Jar," written by four Protestant Kansas high school girls in 1999, that won her the greatest recognition.

In recent years, a biography of Mrs. Sendler called her "Mother of the children of the Holocaust," and Polish President Lech Kaczynski awarded her the Order of the White Eagle, Poland's highest civilian decoration.

"Every Jewish child who survived due to my efforts has justified my existence on this Earth but is no cause for praise," Mrs. Sendler told the Express. "We who were rescuing children are not some kind of heroes. That term irritates me greatly. The opposite is true. I continue to have qualms of conscience that I did so little. I could have done more. This regret will follow me to my death."

She was twice married and divorced from Mieczyslaw Sendler. Her second husband, Stefan Zgrzembski, died in the late 1950s, and a son from that marriage, Adam, died in 1999.

Survivors include a daughter from her second marriage, Janka Zgrzembska of Warsaw, and a granddaughter.