JANINA GAWROŃSKA - Monument For Reality

Description by my mother, Anna Gawrońska:

In 2009, just after my mother Janina Gawronska's death and after coming back from her funeral in Warsaw, Poland to Spain (where I live), by coincidence I stumbled upon this video, recorded by TV Michalin on September 1st 2007, in memory of the 68th anniversary of the WWII breakout.

You can imagine how deeply touched I felt…!

It was a modest ceremony organized in front of the monument for Polish soldiers at the cemetery in Jozefow, where my mother lived most of her life. Janina Gawronska was then one of the few still alive combatants of that war, a former member of the National Army (AK) and participant in Warsaw Uprising in August of 1944.

The poem she recites, titled "Red Poppies”, was written by her when I was a young girl and did not yet realize how very alive were in her those painful memories from her youth during the war time and how much they weighed on her life, and not only hers.

WWII, and especially the Warsaw Uprising will remain in the memory of Polish people forever as a symbol of courage, strength and love for the nation, passed from generation to generation and deeply rooted in our turbulent history.

My mother participated in the Warsaw Uprising in Warsaw’s Old Town, where she was a paramedic to the 1st Motorised Artillery Battalion "Młot" ("Radosław") under a pseudonym “Sister Lukasz”. She took care of the wounded and of the organization of field hospitals.
After the fall of Warsaw Uprising, the order was to retreat to the center of Warsaw by the underground canals. She refused it to stay with the wounded.
Because of that decision, she became an ocular witness of a brutal shooting of the wounded by Germans, when the hospital at 7 Dluga St. was taken over by a branch of SS. She also managed to save the life of her wounded sister, Irena Kwiatkowska.

After the war ended Janina Gawronska testified as a witness in front of the Chief Commission for Investigation of German Crimes in Poland and her testimony is still available. The links below contain the information in Polish and English.
https://bit.ly/300VuIj
https://bit.ly/2MmeybI

After the war, my mother worked for years for RSW “Prasa”- Publishing House as an editor and journalist, and amongst others, for a socio-cultural magazine “Radar” - not an easy task for ones like her, who did not belong to the only one in those times political party, communist PZPR.

Only after her retirement, Janina allowed herself to expose her artistic soul by painting mainly flowers and strange faces she called “psychological portraits”.
From time to time she organized shows of her work, but the real gallery was her apartment in Jozefow, near Otwock, on 30 Warynski St. Unfortunately the house she lived in, a wooden possession of Gawronski family, burned in a fire and everything was completely lost.

The things that remain of her creative body of work are paintings she brought with herself as gifts when she came to visit me and family in Argentina. Those paintings are still there, in Eldorado, Misiones.

My mother was different from other mothers and as a child, I did not understand it, but now I know, that exactly because of her uniqueness, and especially because of the strength of her character, she was able to live through the most difficult situations. Today I am proud of her faithfulness to herself, which she retained till the end of her life.

"Beautiful and terrifying" is how aptly described her my friend Wieslaw Sadurski, to me she is simply my mama...


Special thanks to:

Wieslaw Sadurski / http://wisarts.com / for the poem translation.
Monique Rebelle /https://www.moniquerebelle.com / for the translation of my mother's words.
TVMichalin /    / tvmichalin   / for filming and posting this event.