Warsaw opens condolence book for 1944 Uprising veteran Wanda Traczyk-Stawska after death at 99

Warsaw opens memorial book

On 19 August 2026, the city of Warsaw opened a public book of condolences in the Chamber of Memory at the Warsaw Insurgents Cemetery in the Wola district to honour Wanda Traczyk-Stawska. The memorial book opened at 17:00 in the History Hall and will remain accessible to residents for three days through 21 August. Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski invited the public to leave written tributes and place flowers and grave candles at memorial sites across the capital. Polish state leaders, including Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Sejm Marshal Włodzimierz Czarzasty, and Senate Marshal Małgorzata Kidawa-Błońska, issued formal tributes following her death on 18 August at age 99.

Pani Wanda fought for memory for years. About the Warsaw Uprising. About civilian victims. And the work of her life is this place, the Chamber of Memory in Wola.

Wartime service and resistance

Born in Warsaw on 7 April 1927, Traczyk-Stawska joined the underground Szare Szeregi scouting movement in 1942 after witnessing German soldiers kill an infant during the 1939 invasion. During the German occupation, she distributed underground bulletins, painted resistance symbols on city walls, and delivered death sentences issued by the Polish Underground State to collaborators. During the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, she served under the noms de guerre "Pączek" and "Atma" as a courier and shooter in the Protective Unit of the Military Publishing Plants within the Home Army Bureau of Information and Propaganda. She fought in Śródmieście and Powiśle, participating in battles for the Holy Cross Church and the police headquarters. On 6 September 1944, she sustained severe shrapnel wounds from a grenade launcher, and on 7 September she received the Cross of Valour under Order Number 26. Following the capitulation of the uprising, German forces transferred her to prisoner-of-war camps, including Stalag VI-C Oberlangen, until soldiers of General Stanisław Maczek's 1st Armoured Division liberated the camp on 12 April 1945.

Postwar career and memory preservation

Traczyk-Stawska returned to Warsaw in 1947, completed a psychology degree at the University of Warsaw, and worked as a special education teacher for children with disabilities until the late 1970s. She taught at Special School Number 6 in Praga and Primary Special School Number 3 on Ząbkowska Street. Alongside her teaching career, she led efforts to locate unrecorded insurgent burial sites throughout Warsaw and chaired the Social Committee for the Warsaw Insurgents Cemetery. Her advocacy secured the establishment of the Day of Remembrance for the Civil Population of Insurgent Warsaw and led to the construction of the Chamber of Memory in Wola Park.

Public advocacy and national reactions

Throughout her later life, Traczyk-Stawska remained engaged in civic matters, participating in public demonstrations and defending constitutional principles, women's rights, and human rights. In 2018, she supported protests by persons with disabilities outside the Polish parliament, and in 2020 she joined demonstrations concerning reproductive rights. Fellow insurgent Anna Przedpełska-Trzeciakowska, who served as an Armia Krajowa medic under the nom de guerre "Grodzka", spoke on national television about their shared wartime and postwar commitments.

Wanda was a person who reacted to evil in every form.

Tributes were also released by Defence Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, Culture Minister Marta Cienkowska, Family and Labour Minister Agnieszka Dziemianowicz-Bąk, Infrastructure Minister Dariusz Klimczak, and Interior Minister Marcin Kierwiński.