The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler Full Movie - Part 1 of 3. Irena Sendler (née Krzyzanowska) is a Catholic social worker who has sympathized with the Jews since her childhood, when her physician father died of typhus contracted while treating poor Jewish patients. When she initially proposes saving Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto, her idea is met with skepticism by fellow workers, her parish priest, and even her own mother Janina. Irena Sendler, who died last year at 98, was responsible for saving the lives of 2,500 Jewish children during World War II, smuggling them out of the Warsaw ghetto and delivering them to Polish Catholic families who reared them until they could be reunited with their parents after the war. In 2007 she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize but lost to Al Gore! "The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler" (a Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation shown Sunday on CBS) recounts her story with the zeal, passion, terror and chaos that her mission involved. Irena Sendler has been called the female Oskar Schindler, and the movie proves that yes, indeed, she possessed a courageous heart. Directed by John Kent Harrison; written by Mr. Harrison and Lawrence John Spagnola, based on the book "The Mother of the Holocaust Children" by Anna Mieszkowska; Brent Shields, Jeff Most and Jeff Rice, executive producers; Jerzy Zielinski, director of photography; Henk Van Eeghen, editor; Jan A. P. Kazcmarek, composer. Produced by Hallmark Hall of Fame Productions. WITH: Anna Paquin (Irena), Goran Visnjic (Stefan), Michelle Dockery (Eva), Danuta Stenka (Hannah), Rebecca Windheim (Karolina), Sergei Marchenko (Jasio), Paul Freeman (Monsignor Godlewski), Leigh Lawson (Rabbi Rozenfeld), Marcia Gay Harden (Janina Sendler) and Nathaniel Parker (Dr. Majkowski).