Walentyna Janta-Połczyńska

Walentyna Janta-Połczyńska (née Stocker; 1 February 1913, Lemberg — 2 April 2020, New York City) was the last surviving member of the Polish government-in-exile during the Second World War, and a founder of the Polish wartime resistance radio station Świt (Dawn). Her father, who was of English origin, worked in the mining industry and came from a family that prospected for oil in eastern Poland. She had a brother, Andrzej, and a sister, Krystyna.

She graduated from secondary school in Krosno. In June 1940, when the Polish government-in-exile was set up, she became the personal secretary to General Wladyslaw Sikorski—the prime minister in exile. Her sister and nephew died during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. Her mother and brother survived the war. She largely debriefed Polish former prisoners of war as well as concentration camp inmates who had been victims of medical experiments during World War II. She served in the American-run part of Frankfurt from 1945 to 1946, where she met people to help get her mother from Poland to Germany, which was illegal. In 1946, Stocker and her mother emigrated to the United States, first settling in Buffalo, New York. Jan Karski Eagle Award (2016)