1940, the Nazi army invaded Poland. In Warsaw, the Jews of the city were parked in the ghetto: an entire neighborhood surrounded by walls and barbed wire. Anyone who tries to escape is shot without warning; the only people allowed to enter are members of the welfare department. Among them, Irena comes every day to bring food and support to those who are locked up in this hell. The day when, on her deathbed, a young mother entrusts her son’s life to her, Irena sets out to smuggle the orphans out of the ghetto. For innocence to be spared barbarism, it must be ready to risk its life.
Irena Sendlerowa, who died in 2008 and was declared Just Among the Nations in 1965, was one of the greatest heroes of the Second World War, saving nearly 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw ghetto. And yet his name is forgotten from the history books... It was by chance reading an article about her that Jean-David Morvan had the click: his life had to be told. With Séverine Tréfouël and David Evrard, they retrace on three albums the humanist struggle of this "mother of the children of the Holocaust." This human trajectory is all the more exceptional because it questions us about how we look at the world and others. Because Irena testifies to the past but remains profoundly contemporary. What his story expresses are the choices: do we decide at some point to open up to others, or do we withdraw into ourselves? Carried by a drawing of great sensitivity, Irena succeeds in the tour de force to speak without heaviness of a strong subject, poignant and despite everything deeply current...