Life in a Jar: The Irena Sendler Project

Megan’s mother, Debra, rents Schindler’s List for Megan to watch ahead of her research trip after hearing her talk about how much the movie had affected Liz. Like Liz, Megan, her mother, and her brother were fascinated and heartbroken by the film. Megan feels “the implications of [the film] growing weightier, dramatizing a horror so complete, yet recent enough that people were still alive who had miraculously lived through it” (27).

During the research trip, at the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education, the three girls use the fast, high-speed internet to find as much as they can about Sendler and the Holocaust. Megan finds the story of Elzbieta Ficowska, then excitedly discovers that Sendler rescued Elzbieta as a baby. The three realize that “[w]hat makes Irena’s story different is how much she cared who each kid was […] how she buried their names in a bottle under the apple tree so they would know who they were and that they were Jewish” (29). They decide to make this a central theme of their play, and after brainstorming titles, settle on Life in a Jar.

Following this first research trip, the trio make other library research trips. They begin to find more information about Sendler and the organization she eventually worked for, ZEGOTA, but still struggle, as “neither Irena’s heroism nor ZEGOTA were celebrated or even recognized by the Communist Polish state” (30).