“On the eve of the 81st anniversary of the Uprising, Mrs. Halina Jędrzejewska ‘Sławka’ passed away tonight. Because of her bravery, she was twice awarded the Cross of Valor and named an Honorary Citizen of Warsaw,” Trzaskowski wrote on social media, recalling years of commemorations held with her despite declining health.
Born in Warsaw on Oct. 19, 1926, Jędrzejewska joined clandestine scouting in 1940 and served as a liaison officer in the underground Home Army.
During the 63-day uprising she moved with the Miotła battalion’s Kedyw shock troops, tending the wounded in battles across Wola, the Old Town, Czerniaków and Książęca.
Captured after the revolt, she was interned in Sandbostel and Oberlangen prisoner-of-war camps, freed in 1945 and assigned to the women’s auxiliary of the Polish Air Force in Britain. Returning home in 1946, she studied medicine, married fellow insurgent Tadeusz Jędrzejewski and built a career in orthopedic trauma surgery, earning her doctorate in 1966.
From the late 1950s she chaired the Miotła battalion’s welfare commission and later sat on veterans’ boards, serving three terms as vice-president of the Warsaw branch of the Association of Combatants and, from 1994, of the Warsaw Uprising Veterans Union.
The Polish state honored her with the Knight’s, Officer’s and Commander’s Crosses of the Order of Polonia Restituta as well as Warsaw’s Gold Merit Badge.
(jh)
Source: PAP