Anna Walentynowicz

Polish free trade union activist

Anna Walentynowicz (; ; 15 August 1929 – 10 April 2010) was a Polish free trade union activist and co founder of Solidarity, the first non communist trade union in the Eastern Bloc. Her firing from her job at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk in August 1980 was the event that ignited the strike at the shipyard, set off a wave of strikes across Poland, and quickly paralyzed the Baltic coast. The Interfactory Strike Committee (MKS) based in the Gdańsk shipyard eventually transformed itself into Solidarity; by September, more than one million workers were on strike in support of the 21 demands of MKS, making it the largest strike ever. Walentynowicz's arrest became an organizing slogan (Bring Anna Walentynowicz Back to Work!) in the early days of the Gdańsk strike. She is referred to by some as the "mother of independent Poland." She was among the dignitaries killed in the 2010 Polish Air Force Tu 154 crash near Smolensk in Russia, which also claimed the lives of Lech Kaczyński, the President of Poland and his wife, and the senior commanders of the Polish Armed Forces. In 2006, she was awarded Poland's highest honour, the Order of the White Eagle. In 2020, Time magazine included her on the list of 100 Women of the Year who influenced the world over the last 100 years.

Walentynowicz was born in 1929 in the village of Sinne, Poland (today Sadove, Ukraine) in Rivne oblast, as Anna Lubczyk, to a family of Ukrainian Shtundists. During the Second World War at the age of ten she began to work as a maid. Later, after the war, she migrated into Poland. Walentynowicz began working in the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk, Poland in 1950, first as a welder, later as a crane operator. Recognized as a "Hero of Socialist Labor" or Stakhanovite for her hard work, Walentynowicz became disillusioned with the communist system in Poland, especially after the bloody events in December 1970 on the Baltic Coast. While she was an activist and a member of a socialist youth organization, she was never formally a member of the communist party. Anna was a devout Catholic, who believed in social justice and standing up against oppression, and who became deeply moved in her later years by the teachings of Pope John Paul II, with whom she developed a personal relationship. One of the last letters which John Paul II wrote was to Anna Walentynowicz wishing her speedy recovery from a back injury. Anna began her quest for justice by speaking out publicly when one of her supervisors stole money from the workers' bonus fund to play the lottery. As editor of the Polish samizdat (bibuła) Robotnik Wybrzeża (The Coastal Worker), she distributed an underground newsheet at the shipyard; she often challenged the authorities, it was not uncommon for her to openly challenge her superiors.

Walentynowicz died in a plane crash near Smolensk on 10 April 2010, along with President Lech Kaczyński, First Lady Maria Kaczyńska, and many other prominent Polish leaders, while en route to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre during World War II. A plaque on her house in Wrzeszcz, a borough of Gdańsk, has recently been dedicated and the city of Gdynia named an intersection after her. Michael Szporer, Professor of Communications at University of Maryland wrote about her: "Her life was very much like Poland's, never nothing, but if you are not afraid to speak up for yourself and care for others, just look what you can become, Pani Ania, a worthier role model than most, because an honest one. Our caring and protective mother!" In 2015, a trial began over attempted poisoning of Anna Walentynowicz in 1981.

In 2011, a commemorative plaque dedicated to Anna Walentynowicz was unveiled in the city of Gdańsk. It was designed by artist Sławoj Ostrowski. In 2013, the Anna Walentynowicz Square was ceremonially opened in Wrocław in order to commemorate her role in bringing an end to communism in Poland. In 2015, a statue of Walentynowicz was unveiled at the Pantheon of National Heroes of the Cemetery of the Fallen at the Battle of Warsaw in Ossów. In December 2015, the main room (The Column Room) in the Chancellery of the Prime Minister of Poland was named after Anna Walentynowicz. In 2017, a street in Szczecin was renamed from General Berling to Anna Walentynowicz. A street bearing her name was also established in Lublin. In 2018, the Sejm passed a resolution establishing 2019 as the "Year of Anna Walentynowicz". On 12 October 2020, President of Poland Andrzej Duda officially unveiled a monument dedicated to Walentynowicz in Kyiv, Ukraine, and said that she is "a symbol of the Solidarity movement, a woman who, among all the men who were there at that time, was an element contributing to the female way of thinking about Poland and Polish affairs".