What Rescue Costs

In October 1943, the Gestapo came for Irena Sendler. For months, the thirty-three-year-old Polish social worker had used her permit to inspect the Warsaw Ghetto for typhus as cover for something far more dangerous — smuggling Jewish children to safety. Sedated infants hidden in toolboxes. Toddlers carried out in suitcases. Older children led through sewer tunnels beneath the ghetto walls. By the time the Germans arrested her, Sendler and her network within Żegota, the Polish underground's Council to Aid Jews, had rescued approximately 2,500 children.

She was interrogated at Gestapo headquarters on Szucha Avenue and imprisoned in Pawiak. They broke both her legs and her feet, demanding the names and locations of the hidden children. Sendler refused to speak. Sentenced to death, she was saved only when Żegota operatives bribed a German guard during her transport to execution. She escaped Warsaw on crutches, permanently scarred — but not a single child's hiding place was revealed.

Proverbs 24:11-12 commands, "Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter." The passage leaves no room for bystanders. But Sendler's story reminds us that real rescue always costs something. It cost her broken bones, a death sentence, and a lifetime of pain.

The question for every believer is not whether rescue is convenient but whether we are willing to pay its price. Somewhere near you, someone staggers toward destruction. What will your silence cost them?