Bronisława Czubakowska

Bronisława Czubakowska had been born in Zgierz, Poland, in 1916.

In April 1940, the German occupiers rounded up young persons in Zgierz and deported them to Brandenburg in Germany. Bronisława Czubakowska was forced to work in a textile-production company, which employed 130 Polish forced laborers in addition to its several hundred German employees. The women lived in a camp on company grounds and had to adhere to very strict rules, always under the threat of severe punishment.

On July 12, 1941, Bronisława Czubakowska was involved in a minor fire in one of the German women’s restrooms. Two days later, she was interrogated by the Gestapo and arrested under the suspicion of arson and sabotage. A seven-year prison sentence, issued on September 10, 1941, was revised by the senior prosecutor of Potsdam and converted into a death verdict on May 13, 1942.

Up to May 7, 1942, she had been incarcerated in Berlin-Moabit, and after a hospital admission for pulmonary tuberculosis she was transferred to the women’s prison in Barnimstrasse on July 9, 1942. Bronisława Czubakowska was executed on August 15, 1942.

In her last letter to her family, she wrote: “Make sure that my mortal remains are buried with my mother’s.” However, after her death, her body was transferred to the Berlin anatomical department to be part of the research of anatomist Professor Hermann Stieve (1886–1952). After dissection, her body was cremated.

A likely last resting place is a mass grave for victims executed at Plötzensee at the cemetery in Altglienicke (Berlin). To honor Bronisława Czubakowska’s last wish, an urn with earth from this burial was interred in her mother’s grave in Zgierz in 2005. Her family had never before heard anything about her final destiny in Germany. The Nazi verdict against her was only overturned in 2005 – 63 years after her death.