Helena Wanda Błażusiakówna (4 February 1926 – 25 July 1999) was a Polish girl whose prayer, scratched on a cell wall during arrest by Nazis in 1944, was set to music by

Henryk Górecki Henryk Mikołaj Górecki ( , ; 6 December 1933 – 12 November 2010) was a Polish composer of contemporary classical music. According to critic Alex Ross, no recent classical composer has had as much commercial success as Górecki. He became a l ...

in his Symphony No. 3 ''Sorrowful Songs''. She was born in

Szczawnica Szczawnica is a resort town in Nowy Targ County in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, in southern Poland. As of June 30, 2007, its population was 7,378. Szczawnica has been a well-known resort town since the mid nineteenth century. Due to the presence ...

, a town in the far south of

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

only half a mile from the border with

Slovakia Slovakia, officially the Slovak Republic, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the west, and the Czech Republic to the northwest. Slovakia's m ...

, and was a member of the

Góral Góral is a Polish surname literally meaning the member of the subethnic group of Gorals The Gorals (; Goral ethnolect: ''Górole''; ; Cieszyn Silesian dialect, Cieszyn Silesian: ''Gorole''), also anglicized as the Highlanders, are an ethnograp ...

("mountain dweller") community, which spanned the border with

Czechoslovakia Czechoslovakia ( ; Czech language, Czech and , ''Česko-Slovensko'') was a landlocked country in Central Europe, created in 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland beca ...

in the Tatra mountains.

Biography

Under the

Nazi Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...

occupation of Poland in

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, on September 25, 1944, the 18 year old Błażusiakówna was one of 16 people arrested and held in the

Gestapo The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated Gestapo (), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of F ...

headquarters in

Zakopane Zakopane (Gorals#Language, Podhale Goral: ''Zokopane'') is a town in the south of Poland, in the southern part of the Podhale region at the foot of the Tatra Mountains. From 1975 to 1998, it was part of Nowy Sącz Voivodeship; since 1999, it has ...

. During her imprisonment she scratched a short prayer into the wall of cell number 3, which was subsequently discovered by the Polish composer

and set to music as the second movement of his Symphony No. 3 'Sorrowful Songs'.Classic FM, Henryk Górecki: Symphony No.3 (‘Symphony of Sorrowful Songs’)
/ref>McCusker, Eamonn.
Symphony No.3: Sorrowful Songs
". ''CD Times''. Retrieved on 19 June 2007.
/ref> Eight weeks after her capture, on 22 November 1944, Błażusiakówna was being transported by the Nazis by train, and was one of 12 people rescued by guerrillas. She walked over the mountains to

Nowy Targ Nowy Targ (Officially: ''Royal Free city of Nowy Targ'', Yiddish: ''Naymark'', Gorals, Goral dialect: ''Nowy Torg'' ) is a town in southern Poland, in the Lesser Poland Voivodeship. It is located in the Orava-Nowy Targ Basin at the foot of the Go ...

, where she was given a skirt and a large scarf. That evening she was back with her grandparents in Szczawnica. She fell ill and spent the rest of the war in hospital, where the staff took great risks to treat her and hide her identity.

Later life

Błażusiakówna survived the war, was married in

Wadowice Wadowice () is a town in southern Poland, southwest of Kraków with 17,455 inhabitants (2022), situated on the Skawa river, confluence of Vistula, in the eastern part of Silesian Foothills (Pogórze Śląskie). Wadowice is known for being the bir ...

in 1950 and gave birth to 5 children.Genealogy.com, Helena Wanda Błażusiakówna
/ref>''Lamentation of hard Helena'' (Google translation)
''

Gość Niedzielny ''Gość Niedzielny'' (; lit. Sunday Guest) is a Polish weekly Catholic news magazine. It is published in Katowice Katowice (, ) is the capital city of the Silesian Voivodeship in southern Poland and the central city of the Katowice urban area ...

'' (Polish weekly Catholic News magazine), 8-13-2020, (August 13 2020)

The prayer

The prayer which Błażusiakówna scratched into her cell wall was signed: ''Helena Wanda Blazusiakowna, aged 18, detained since 25 September, 1944.'' Original text : The LiederNet ArchiveThe LiederNet Archive, Symphony no. 3 (Symphony of Sorrowful Songs)
/ref>

References

Additional Sources

PDF University of Turin Department of Languages & Foreign Literatures and Modern Cultures Degree Course in Linguistic Mediation Sciences. The third symphony of Henryk Mikołaj Górecki: notes for a textual and contextual analysis. Final Dissertation by Stefania Spinelli, 2017-2018. ref pages 33-38

GOSC, 8-13-2020, (August 13 2020), ''Lamentation of hard Helena'' (Google translation)
(GOSC

(lit. Sunday Guest) is a Polish weekly Catholic News magazine. {{DEFAULTSORT:Blazusiakowna, Helena 20th-century Polish women Polish people of World War II 1926 births 1999 deaths Nazi Germany and Catholicism