Anna Walentynowicz

Anna Walentynowicz was a vocal activist for labor rights who became the catalyst for the Solidarity Movement during the 1980’s in Poland. Recognized as a labor leader in the shipyards of Gdansk, Walentynowicz was fired from her job as a crane operator for anti-communist activity just a few short weeks before her scheduled retirement. The act in question was stealing old candle stubs from a graveyard to make new candles to honor the memory of fallen workers killed in a food-shortage protest a decade earlier. Anna’s firing resulted in a strike at the shipyard, which spread throughout the nation, becoming the largest labor strike in history.

The strikes led to the formation of the Solidarity trade union, which would grow to over ten million members within two years, and the larger movement would eventually topple communist rule in Poland in the late eighties. Walentynowicz has been called the “Mother of Independent Poland” and continued her activism until she died in a plane crash along with the Polish president and many other officials in 2010.