Premiering Sunday, April 19 (9:00-11:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network

Based up the true story of Irena Sendler, a Polish Catholic social worker in the early 1940s who is credited with saving the lives of 2,500 Jewish children during World War II.

During the war Irena Sendler was able to move women in and out of the Warsaw Jewish Ghetto disguised as nurses working for the Warsaw’s Health Department. With the ruse of containing the spread of Typhus and Spotted Fever, Ms. Sendler and her fellow “nurses” were actually sneaking children out (with the consent of the Jewish parents) of the Ghetto by sedating them and hiding them inside boxes, suitcases and coffins as a way of saving them from deportation to German death camps. Once the children were snuck out they were given new identities and placed with Polish families or in convents to protect them. Ms. Sendler kept a record of all the children’s birth names and where they were placed hidden so once the war was over the children could be reunited with their families.

Unfortunately in 1943 Ms. Sendler’s deception was discovered and she was arrested and tortured by the Gestapo resulting with her feet being broken. She was scheduled to be executed but on the day of her execution she was rescued by “Zegota,” the same underground network she worked with to save the Jewish children. By the end of the war all of the 2,500 children she smuggled out were never betrayed or discovered by the Nazi German occupation forces.