My photo with the great Polish patriot, anti-Nazi fighter, and political leader Stefan Korboński was taken on June 20, 1976 in front of the White House on the day of my daughter’s baptism. Stefan and his wife, Zofia Korbońska, my colleague in the Polish Service of the Voice of America (VOA), were Leokadia W. Lipien’s (Lodi Rohrer) godparents.
Stefan Korboński (2 March 1901 in Praszka – 23 April 1989 in Washington, D.C., USA) was a Polish agrarian politician, lawyer, journalist and a notable member of the wartime authorities of the Polish Secret State. Among others, he was the last person to hold the post of Government Delegate for Poland. Arrested by the NKVD in 1945, he was released soon afterwards only to be forced into exile. He settled in the United States, where he remained active among the local Polish diaspora. An active journalist, he was among the few people whose names were completely banned by the communist censorship in Poland. READ MORE in Wikipedia
Zofia Korbońska, née Ristau (10 May 1915 in Warsaw – 16 August 2010 in Washington, D.C.) was a Polish resistance fighter and journalist.
She was born in Warsaw and graduated from the Maria Konopnicka High School and School of Political Sciences there. In 1938 she married a lawyer and Polish People’s Party politician Stefan Korboński. During World War II, in 1941, she helped to organize the underground radio station, which sent the coded radio transmissions to the Polish government in exile. Her dispatches spread the news about German atrocities committed in Poland.[1] As a member of Armia Krajowa, Korbońska eventually took part in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. In June 1945, she was arrested by NKVD together with her husband.[1] They were released after the creation of the Provisional Government of National Unity. In 1947, when her husband was in danger of another arrest, they fled together to Sweden hiding in a ship transporting coal.[1] Since November 1947, they lived in the United States, where she worked in the Voice of America and Polish American Congress.
In 2006 she was given the title of honorary citizen of the Capital City of Warsaw. President of Poland Lech Kaczyński awarded her the Grand Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta.[2] She struggled with illness for a few years before her death on 16 August 2010. She was buried at the Polish Cemetery in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.
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References
- Ted Lipien: Remembering a Polish-American patriot at the Washington Times, 1 September 2010.
- Nie żyje Zofia Korbońska at tvn24.pl, 16 August 2010.
