Anna Walentynowicz

Anna Walentynowicz was a legendary figure of Solidarity, the socio-political movement that initiated the fall of communism in Europe, and was recognized by Time as one of the 100 women who defined the last century. Born in 1929 in the village of Sienne, she moved to Gdańsk in 1945 and spent the rest of her life there. At 21, she began work as a welder at the Gdańsk Shipyard, one of the hardest and most hazardous jobs in shipbuilding, laboring for 12 or more hours a day until health problems forced her to retrain as an overhead crane operator. Her hard life made her especially sensitive to the mistreatment of others, and she repeatedly stood up against injustice despite persecution by the communist authorities, who frequently arrested, interrogated, interned, and imprisoned her. From 1978 she was an active member and one of the leaders of the illegal Free Trade Unions, formed in opposition to the communist authorities, and she even allowed her apartment to serve as a contact point. For this activity she faced severe harassment from the secret police, including temporary detentions, searches, threats of dismissal, and even attempted murder. On August 8, 1980, five months before her planned retirement, she was dismissed for indiscipline, and her union associates turned that injustice into the pretext for an organized protest against the communist authorities. The demand to reinstate her became the first of the Gdańsk Shipyard workers' 21 demands in the most important strike in modern Polish history, a strike that hastened the fall of communism a decade later. The protest wave sparked by her dismissal gave rise to Solidarity, which led to democratic changes in Poland and then throughout Europe in 1989. After Solidarity was formed, she continued to play an active role in the movement and remained true to her ideals, believing that Poles might sometimes be poor, but they should never be intimidated. Her life became the subject of news reports, books, plays, and films, and among her many honors she received Poland's highest state distinction, the Order of the White Eagle, for acting to bring about democratic change and win freedom for Poland. She died in a plane crash in Smolensk, Russia, on April 10, 2010, while taking part in a state delegation headed by President Lech Kaczyński and his wife to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Katyń massacre, the mass execution of Polish officers by the Soviets in the Katyń forest in 1940.

Washington, District of Columbia · United States