Anna Szatkowska

Anna Szatkowska (15 March 1928 – 27 February 2015) was a World War II member of the Polish Home Army which she joined at the age of 16 to help in liberating Warsaw from German occupation. She served as first-aider. Sixty years later, she described her experiences in a book, La Maison brulée.

Biography Anna Szatkowska was the daughter of Roman Catholic writer and resistance fighter Zofia Kossak-Szczucka, the granddaughter of activist Tadeusz Kossak, who was the twin brother of painter Wojciech Kossak, and the great-granddaughter of painter Juliusz Kossak. In Górki, at Poland's southern frontier, she lived with her brothers, parents and grandparents in a manor house in relative affluence. The situation changed dramatically when World War II began on 1 September 1939 and the family had to leave Górki in search for a safe haven.

Initially, Szatkowska continued her schooling in a boarding-school for girls, but in 1944, aged 16, she signed up with the Polish underground army, and she was accepted into the Ewa-Maria patrol, which consisted of seven young girls, first-aiders. The Warsaw Uprising started on 1 August 1944, and lasted for 63 days until crushed by the Germans - while the Red Army stood waiting on the other side of the Vistula river. The book starts before World War II; it has a day-by-day account of the Warsaw Uprising and finishes in the 1960s.