The oldest participant of the Warsaw Uprising passed away at the age of 106 on Thursday, the day the Polish capital marks the 80th anniversary of the WWII insurrection.
Barbara Sowa, whose nom de guerre was “Basia”, saw action as a nurse, treating wounded insurgents during brutal fighting in 1944.
Announcing her death on social media, the memorial group “Don't Forget About Us” said: “Very sad news. Today, on the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising, the oldest participant of the Uprising died – Barbara Sowa, aka ‘Basia’.”
The Warsaw Uprising, which began on August 1, 1944, was a 63-day effort by the Polish resistance to liberate Warsaw from German occupation, resulting in the deaths of around 15,000 insurgents and 250,000 civilians.
Barbara Sowa was born into a patriotic Warsaw family. Her father, Paweł Gettel, was a political activist, and her mother worked at the National Bank of Poland.
Barbara studied at the Warsaw School of Economics and was about to start her final semester in September 1939, the month that World War II broke out.
On January 25, 1940, she joined the Union of Armed Struggle, later known as the Home Army, the WWII Polish armed resistance movement. During the German occupation, she participated in secret nursing courses and trained at the Infant Jesus Clinical Hospital in Warsaw.
During the uprising, she initially ran a makeshift hospital in a basement, treating wounded insurgents. However, after heavy shelling, Basia, along with other nurses, was forced to evacuate the wounded to other locations.
Captured during intense fighting, she was sent to the town of Pruszków just outside the capital. She later managed to escape to a nearby town, where she hid.
Around September 15, she joined a new field hospital where she cared for the wounded soldiers of the Kampinos Group, a partisan formation of the Home Army, who were brought from surrounding villages by peasants, according to the Warsaw Uprising Museum.
In one hospital, she met Home Army fighter Bernard Sowa, who later became her husband.
Barbara Sowa was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta in 2018, the Cross of the Home Army, the Warsaw Uprising Cross, and the Veteran's Badge of the Independence Struggle.
