Maria Rutkiewicz

Maria Rutkiewicz (22 July 1917 – 27 June 2007) was a Polish communist and an editor. During the Nazi occupation of Poland, she was a radio operator with the Polish resistance.

Maria Rutkiewicz was born in Brześć nad Bugiem (now Brest, Belarus) to Teresa and Miecysław Kamieniecka in a well-educated, liberal family. Her older siblings were active in a socialist/communist circle and in 1936, she joined the Communist Party of Poland. In 1938, she and another active Party member, Wincenty Jan Rutkiewicz, known as "Wicek", were married. It was a difficult time. Joseph Stalin's Great Purge had eliminated a number of the Polish Communist Party's leaders and in 1939, Hitler invaded the country. Thousands of Polish soldiers were sent to German prisoner of war camps and there was an order to eliminate the Polish intelligentsia, that spelled out who was in danger.

With her husband, then a soldier, taken prisoner of war, Rutkiewicz fled to Bialystok in Russian-occupied Poland. After Hitler invaded Russia in 1941, she fled to Moscow and was recruited into the initiative group of the Polish Workers' Party (PPR) and trained as a radio operator. She joined a cell of Polish communists led by Marceli Nowotko that was to parachute into Poland and work in the communist resistance. After one practice jump, the group landed outside Warsaw in the early hours of 28 December 1941. Her husband joined her in Warsaw, having escaped his imprisonment.

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was crushed in May 1943, the Nazis turned their attention to the Polish underground. All but one of Nowotko's cell were caught and shot. Wicek Rutkiewicz was arrested in July and sent to Auschwitz; in September 1943, the Gestapo burst in on a pregnant Maria Rutkiewicz transmitting radio messages to Moscow. She was beaten, arrested and taken to Pawiak prison, but then brought back to Gestapo headquarters for interrogation, which included more beatings. The Gestapo told her that because of her condition, they would be humane and only beat her about the face. When she was returned to the prison, the supervisor was unable to recognize her.

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