Jadwiga Piłsudska
Jadwiga Piłsudska-Jaraczewska (born February 20, 1920, in Warsaw, Poland) is a pilot, who served in the Air Transport Auxiliary during the Second World War. She is a daughter of Marshal and Naczelnik Józef Piłsudski.
Life
Jadwiga Piłsudska was born on February 20, 1920, in Warsaw, Poland, the younger daughter of Marshal Józef Piłsudski, Poland's Chief of State, by his second wife, Aleksandra (English-speakers can find it disconcerting that, in Polish, many surnames have a separate form for males and females). The Marshal died in 1935.
In 1937 she began flying gliders and obtained a pilot's licence. In 1939 she passed her matura and planned to study aircraft engineering at the Warsaw Polytechnic.
In September 1939, Poland was invaded by the Nazis, initiating the Second World Warand the family felt it wise to leave the country immediately. Piłsudska left with her mother and elder sister, Wanda, and eventually arrived in the United Kingdom. In her new country, in 1940, she resumed her studies, matriculating at Cambridge University.
In time she received her aircraft pilot's licence, and in July 1942, she joined the Air Transport Auxiliary in the rank of Third Officer. She flew unarmed military aircraft in the crowded and dangerous skies of wartime Britain and was, with Anna Leska and the Lithuanian-Pole Barbara Wojtulanis, one of several Polish women who served as wartime ferry pilots in Britain.
In 1944, she took leave to continue studies in the Polish School of Architecture at Liverpool University. In 1946 she graduated with an engineering degree in architecture.
Also in 1944, she married Lt. Andrzej Jaraczewski, an officer in the Polish Navy. She has two children: a son, Krzysztof (in English, Christopher), and a daughter, Joanna.
Due to the Communist takeover in Poland, she remained in England after the War, as a political emigré.
In 1990, with the return to democracy, she returned to Poland and now lives in Warsaw.
Honors
She has been honored with a Bronze Cross of Merit with Swords and the Commander's Cross of the Polonia Restituta.