One More Name

Olivia stops by Dr. Brougham's office after hours to deliver two boxes of cookies for the Odyssey Middle School Drama Club fundraiser, but her mind is on a history project about the Warsaw Ghetto, where the Nazis crammed 400,000 Jewish people into just sixteen city blocks during World War II. She is angry that so many people stood by and did nothing while six million Jews were killed. Dr. Brougham gently agrees that it was a dark time, but points out that some people did help, and asks if Olivia has ever heard of Irena Sendler, a Polish social worker who entered the ghetto to help control the spread of disease and became a hero.

The story shifts to the ghetto, where a widow named Shoshanna and her young daughter Ariella struggle to survive on a weekly ration of bread, missing Ariella's father and dreaming of ordinary things like potatoes. When Ariella spots a body in the street, Shoshanna rushes out and nearly gets shot by a German officer before Irena steps in, warning the soldiers that the sick should not be handled carelessly. The dead boy is Bartholomew, a street child Irena fed just the day before; he starved because he gave whatever he had to his little sister. Shaken, Irena declares that something must be done to save these children.

At home, Irena's mother begs her to stop, since the Gestapo shoot anyone who helps Jews, along with their families. But Irena remembers her father, a doctor who died of typhoid caring for patients no one else would treat, and his rule: "If someone is drowning, you jump in to save them." Through a sympathetic priest, Father Bukowski, she meets Itzhak and Karina, who work for a hidden network that provides false papers, funds, and hiding places. What the network lacks is what Irena has, access into the ghetto. Itzhak challenges her mother's plea to simply pray for a miracle by asking what if God wants them to be a part of the miracle. The plan: the city courthouse backs up to the ghetto, and a forgotten, unguarded back door can be unlocked from inside.

At the ghetto orphanage Irena is reunited with Stefan, an old friend from university, who helps her sneak out the first child, Esther, Bartholomew's sister. Dressed in Irena's childhood blue dress with a scarf hiding her dark hair, Esther walks through the crowded courthouse holding Irena's hand. A soldier suddenly shouts for the girl in the blue dress, and Irena's heart nearly stops, but he has only come to return the scarf Esther dropped. When he asks the child's name, Esther calmly answers with her new one, Lucina, and they slip away to freedom.

Instead of quitting, Irena prepares better: new names for every child, lessons in the Lord's Prayer since guards use it to test suspicious children, bleached hair, proper clothes, and careful records so families can find their children after the war. She vows to continue "for as long as God puts it on my heart, regardless the cost."

The dangers grow. Trains now leave the ghetto daily for a camp called Treblinka, and Shoshanna, her rations cut in half, considers volunteering just to get bread for Ariella, though she refuses Irena's offer to smuggle Ariella out, saying they will stay together whatever comes. A desperate mother, Mrs. Rotfeld, begs Irena to rescue her weakest son, Aaron, because she cannot feed her four children and "at least one must survive." Then Itzhak brings terrible news: Karina has been arrested by the Gestapo, and the courthouse door has been sealed.

Irena finds a new way. Remembering how baby Moses was saved in a basket, she hides Aaron in a laundry sack to carry him out through the main gate itself. Mrs. Rotfeld pours out her love and her fear, making Irena promise that Aaron's true identity will never be forgotten. As mother and son say goodbye, Irena hurries toward the gate, whispering to the crying boy hidden in the sack that he must be silent, and the story pauses there, with the rescue hanging in the balance.