Zofia Sadowska

Zofia Anastazja Sadowska (born 28 February 1887 in Warsaw; died 7 March 1960 in Warsaw) was a Polish medical doctor, feminist and social activist.

Early life, work and research She was born in a noble family (bearing Lubicz coat of arms), to Stanisław Sadowski and Maria Zofia née Kuczker. She worked as an internist in several cities of the Russian Empire, incl. in hospitals of the Russian Red Cross during World War I. In 1918, she returned to Warsaw, where she became an assistant in the 2nd clinic of internal diseases and pathological anatomy of the newly created medical department of the University of Warsaw, and opened a private practice. During the war of 1920, she was assigned to the military epidemiological hospital in Grodno. (she was the chair of Saint-Petersburg section and a permanent delegate to the general councils of the Association in Warsaw), She co-founded and then was (with e.g. Cezaria Jędrzejewiczowa and Kazimiera Iłłakowiczówna) a member of the governing bodies of the Association of Polish Women Students – Spójnia, within which she led the section of medics. She was the vice-president of the board of the student treasury, she founded student discussion clubs. In February 1919, she ran for the Warsaw City Council from the ninety-eighth place on the list of the National Electoral Committee, without obtaining a seat on the council. She died in 1960 at the age of 73, having left her whole inheritance to Helena Suska (primo voto Szwejcer).

Reception Due to the scandal, the figure of Zofia Sadowska as a scientist and doctor has been erased from collective memory. She appears only in a few memories of her contemporaries (Romana Pachucka, Andrzej Wierzbicki and Józef Mieczysław Pfeiffer do not mention her private life or the events of 1923–27; only Irena Krzywicka mentions "a lesbian scandal"). It was not until the beginning of the 21st century that the subject was taken up by the authors of the calendar "LESteśmy – byłyśmy", and then the literary scholar Krzysztof Tomasik (Homobiografie, 2008), gay rights activist Wojciech Szot, who after writing articles about Sadowska published her biography Panna doktór Sadowska in 2020 and historian Agnieszka Weseli who since 2012 has been organizing in Warsaw yearly parties to commemorate Sadowska on her birthday.