Irena, Book One: Wartime Ghetto by Jean-David Morvan, Séverine Tréfouël, David Evrard, and Walter

I'm treating this as a book made for younger readers - which I think is true - but it touches on a lot of things that a lot of adults would be hesitant to lay in front of children. It definitely not a book for young children, or any particular sensitive ones. But the world is vast and full of cruelty, which children need to learn as soon as is reasonable: this could help show that it's not just full of cruelty.

Irena Sendlerowa was one of the last-discovered heroes of WWII. She worked for the Social Welfare Department of Warsaw, Poland, where - to be blunt about it - she spearheaded a vast conspiracy that snuck 2,5000 children out of the Jewish Ghetto and saved their lives over the course of the war. [1] She was discovered, imprisoned and tortured by the Nazis late in 1943, but didn't give up any of her compatriots. After leaving prison, she worked as a nurse for the end of the war and was wounded then. And she went on to a long career in public service, mostly for children, after the war, only dying in 2008 at nearly a hundred.

Irena, Book One: Wartime Ghetto collects two French albums, of a six-book series (there are two further US editions, collecting the rest), telling Sendlerowa's story. It was written by Jean-David Morvan and Séverine Tréfouël, drawn by David Evrard, colored by Walter, and translated by Dan Christensen.

I think the second volume tells the story of the end of the war, and probably the immediate aftermath. The third volume seems to cover the rest of Sendlerowa's long life, and how she became famous outside Poland much later - Israeli accolades began in the 1960s, and American attention followed in the late '90s, which, as usually happens, brought her to the attention of the rest of the Westernized world.

But this book is the core of her story: 1940 to 1943. The beginnings of the conspiracy, how it ran, the dangers they were in, the tightening grip of the occupying Nazis on the ghetto, and on all Poles. Her torture happens on these pages, and is presented tastefully but without flinching.

There's a two-page spread, about half-way into the first album, with a map of the ghetto, a few comics panels, and text boxes detailing the relentless encroachment of Nazi controls on Jewish life from 1939 to 1943, showing how the noose was set - businesses confiscated, curfews instated, removal to the ghetto, the required armband, death sentences to Poles trying to help Jews escape - on and on and on. There are other, equally crystalline moments here, but that's the best, first one: the one that sparks the "what would you do" thoughts.

Sendlerowa was a hero, period. At great cost to herself - she was very nearly executed - she not only did her job (feeding the poor of the ghetto, taking care of their health) but actively fought against an evil occupying army attempting to genocide her fellow Varsovians. And this book tells a clear, focused version of her story, as appropriate for young readers as it's capable of being.

Evrard uses a cartoony style which softens it a bit - just enough to make it bearable, which a more realistic or action-adventure style would crush. This is about the ones who survived, because it's about Sendlerowa and the children - mostly babies, as we see it here - she smuggled out. But the ones who didn't survive are behind them, in their long line, in our heads, throughout.

[1] The clearest proof that their lives were saved is that, according to all accounts, when after the war the records of the children were unearthed (literally), essentially none of them could be connected to living relatives: the children were the only survivors of their families.