blackswaneuroparedux:Second Officer Jadwiga Piłsudska, a Polish…

blackswaneuroparedux:

Second Officer Jadwiga Piłsudska, a Polish female pilot served with disrtinction in the Air Transport Auxillary (ATA). She was honoured with a Bronze Cross of Merit with Swords and the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta.

She was a daughter of Marshal Józef Piłsudski, the prewar leader of Poland.
Before war she was a renowned glider pilot. In September 1939, together with her sister and mother, she escaped from Soviet-occupied Wilno to Sweden and then to Britain.

In 1944, she took a leave of absence to continue her studies by enrolling in the Polish School of Architecture at Liverpool University. In 1946 she graduated with an engineering degree in architecture.

In 1944, she also married Lieutenant Andrzej Jaraczewski, an officer in the Polish Navy.
She had two children: a son, Christopher Joseph (in Polish Krzysztof
Józef) and daughter, Jane Mary (in Polish Joanna Maria), who later
married Polish politician Janusz Onyszkiewicz.

Due to the Communist
takeover in Poland, she remained in England after the War, as a
political émigré. Never accepting British citizenship, she used a Nansen passport, valid for all countries in the world, except Poland.

In 1977, she and her husband took part in the Silver Jubilee of Elizabeth II on board the MGB S-3 during the Thames River Pageant.

In 1990, with the collapse of the Communist government, she returned to Poland and lived in Warsaw.

She died on 16 November 2014, in Warsaw at the age of 94

**Second Officer Jadwiga Piłsudska serving in the Air Transport Auxillary (ATA). Maidenhead, 19 March 1943.