The socialist youth of Bydgoszcz have appealed for naming the waterside of the Brda River stretching between Mostowa Street and Solidarność bridges for Irena Sendler. Last week they put forward a proposal concerning this matter.

During World War II Irena Sendler, as a member of “Żegota” organization (the Council to aid Jews), rescued many Jewish children from the Holocaust. It has been estimated that about 2.5 thousand young Jewish lives were saved thanks to her help. Together with her collaborators, she brought the children out of the ghetto and accommodated them on the “Aryan side” of the city, hiding them in families, convents and orphanages.

She noted down personal details of each saved child on narrow slips of paper, which she later put into a jar so that she could find them quickly after the war. Arrested by the Gestapo police in 1943, she was tortured and sentenced to death. "Żegota", however, managed to ransom her in return for an enormous amount of bribe.

In 1965 the Yad Vashem Institute in Israel awarded Irena Sendler the “Righteous Among the Nations” medal.