Wanda Traczyk-Stawska, a Warsaw Uprising fighter who later devoted decades to locating insurgents’ graves and preserving their memory, died Aug. 18, 2026, at 99, Interia reported. Her death was announced by Michał Szczerba, a member of the European Parliament, who said he was in contact with her family.
During the German occupation, Traczyk-Stawska gathered intelligence on German troops and took part in minor acts of sabotage as a member of an underground scouting movement. She distributed the underground Biuletyn Informacyjny bulletin and delivered warning letters to Germans through Action N, an underground psychological operation. During the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, she served as an armed fighter and courier in a Home Army detachment, part of Poland’s wartime underground resistance, that guarded the Military Printing Works. She was seriously wounded on Smolna Street on Sept. 6 and became a prisoner of war after the uprising’s capitulation.
After returning to Poland in 1947, Traczyk-Stawska studied psychology at the University of Warsaw and taught for many years at a special primary school.
Across the postwar decades, she spent more than 80 years searching for Warsaw Uprising graves. She worked with other former insurgents to make the Warsaw Insurgents Cemetery a recognized memorial site.
In 2015, she helped establish Oct. 2 as the Day of Remembrance for the Civilian Population of Warsaw Insurgents. Her efforts and persistence also helped establish the Memory Chamber at the Warsaw Insurgents Cemetery in 2022.
