Aleksandra Stypułkowska
Aleksandra Stypułkowska (1906–1982) was a Polish lawyer, resistance fighter, concentration camp survivor, and political journalist. She worked for Radio Free Europe under the name Jadwiga Mieczkowska.
She was born in Warsaw to Władysław Rabski and Zuzanna Kraushar. She attended a girls’ secondary school in Warsaw, finished in 1924, and studied law at the University of Warsaw, graduating in 1928. In 1927 she married Zbigniew Stypułkowski, and after completing her pupillage in 1934 they started a legal practice together.
During World War II she joined the Polish underground. She was detained at Pawiak prison for two months in 1940, arrested again in 1943, and sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp in 1944. She was liberated in 1945 and, with other inmates, was evacuated to Sweden for convalescence, where she stayed until 1947.
In 1947 she moved to Great Britain and worked at the editorial office of Dziennik Polski. She became president of the Polish Association of former German Political Prisoners and Inmates of Concentration Camps.
In 1952 she moved to West Germany to work with the CIA-funded Polish section of Radio Free Europe. In 1959 she became an editor and commentator on the program "Facts, events and opinions," and her voice became one of the station’s best known. She retired in 1974 and returned to London, continuing to provide comments for RFE.
In 1980 she helped found the Information Centre for Polish Affairs in Britain and served as its first president. In 2010 she was posthumously awarded the Commander's Cross with Star of the Order of Polonia Restituta for her work in supporting democracy in Poland and for humanitarian aid during martial law.
Her son Andrzej Stypułkowski, born in 1929, also became an émigré political activist.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 05:10 (CET).