Helena Wanda Błażusiakówna

Helena Wanda Błażusiakówna (4 February 1926 – 25 July 1999) was a Polish girl whose prayer, scratched on a cell wall during arrest by Nazis in 1944, was set to music by Henryk Górecki in his Symphony No. 3 Sorrowful Songs. She was born in Szczawnica, a town in the far south of Poland only half a mile from the border with Slovakia, and was a member of the Góral ("mountain dweller") community, which spanned the border with Czechoslovakia in the Tatra Mountains.

The prayer The prayer which Błażusiakówna scratched into her cell wall was signed: Helena Wanda Blazusiakowna, aged 18, detained since 25 September, 1944.