One More Name

During World War II in Nazi-occupied Warsaw, a young student working on a history project about the Warsaw Ghetto listens as an older friend continues the true story of Irena Sendler, a Polish social worker who has been secretly smuggling Jewish children out of the ghetto. Irena has already begun giving rescued children new names, teaching them Christian prayers, and promising their heartbroken parents that who they really are will never be forgotten. The storyteller admits that Irena had nightmares about those farewells for the rest of her life, but adds, "Sometimes love requires that we do the unimaginable."

Irena and her friends Itzhak and Stefan grow ever more inventive. Children are carried out hidden in coffins, tucked among bricks in a cart, slipped aboard ambulances, and even placed in a toolbox with air holes drilled in the lid. Irena also makes mysterious laundry pickups for a Mr. Zagata; hidden among the linens are baptismal certificates with the children's new names, addresses of families willing to take them in, and money. To make sure families can one day be reunited, Irena borrows her mother's canning jars and fills them with slips of paper recording each child's true name, new name, location, and parents. She hides the jars under a neighbor's apple tree and even practices tossing them out the window into the shrubs in case the Gestapo ever comes knocking. Her worried mother begs her to stop, then softens, saying Irena's father would be proud, and promises to look the other way.

One child, however, remains out of reach. Irena's friend Shoshanna refuses to give up her little daughter Ariella and has even volunteered for transport to Treblinka, believing that there, at least, mother and daughter will be together. Then Itzhak shows Irena a letter from a trusted friend in the north. There are no barracks at Treblinka and no Jews living there. Irena rushes back to Shoshanna with the terrible truth: "It's not a war camp. It's an extermination camp." Shoshanna begs Irena to promise that Ariella will survive if she takes her. Irena answers honestly that she cannot promise that, but she can promise that if Ariella stays, she will not. Shoshanna agrees to have her daughter ready in the morning. That same night, Irena asks at last to meet Mr. Zagata and learns he does not exist; he is an invented name, complete with fake bank accounts, that shields a secret network of businessmen, priests, nurses, and ordinary people funding the rescues.

But when Irena returns at dawn, the street is eerily silent. Stefan tells her the Nazis raided in the night, emptying the orphanage and the apartments and marching everyone to the train for Treblinka, including Shoshanna and Ariella. Irena races to the train and finds Shoshanna, who reveals that Ariella is hiding under the floorboards of their apartment, told to come out only at the sound of Irena's voice. As the train prepares to leave, Shoshanna's last plea is simple: "Just save my daughter."

Irena and Stefan find Ariella safe beneath the floor. Irena gives her a new name, Caroline Stanek, and leads her and Stefan down into the sewer to escape, narrowly avoiding soldiers searching the buildings above. Splashing through the dark tunnel, the little girl remembers her mother's stories and asks, "This is like the Red Sea, isn't it?" Irena agrees that it is a kind of Red Sea. At the far end, Itzhak waits with his truck parked over the manhole, pretending to fix an oil leak, and the three slip into the back just before a German officer inspects it, sees only food, helps himself, and waves the truck on.

The fugitives spend one nervous night at Irena's mother's house, where Caroline gets a bath and a big packed lunch, and Irena shows her the secret jars, writing down her name so that her mother can find her when the war is over. Stefan quietly thanks Irena for saving his life, and a tender moment between them is comically interrupted by Irena's mother, leaving Stefan to insist he had only been admiring her beautiful china. The next morning, Irena wraps Caroline's face in bandages and tells the guards at the train station that she is a government social worker escorting a burned child to a country orphanage. A suspicious guard demands proof the girl is not Jewish, and Caroline calmly recites the Lord's Prayer until he lets them pass. Irena delivers her to the care of nuns far out in the countryside, promising that Stefan will be on a farm only a village away and will visit when he can. When Caroline asks if she will be alone, Irena assures her that she never will be, because God is always with her, and says goodbye hoping with all her heart that they will meet again.