Helena Paderewska (1856-1934)
A Polish social activist, deeply dedicated patriot, and the devoted wife of a composer and the Prime Minister of the Second Polish Republic, Ignacy Paderewski, Helena Paderewska passed away from pneumonia at the age of seventy-eight. She was laid to rest at Montmorency Cemetery beside Ignacy’s son, Alfred (1880-1901).

Born Helena Rosen in Warsaw in 1856, she was the daughter of Władysław Rosen, an officer in the Tsarist army, and a Greek mother, from whom she inherited beauty and a Mediterranean temperament. Her first marriage was to Władysław Górski, a soloist at the Grand Theatre, Warsaw, with whom she had a son and spent nearly twenty years. In 1899, after her first marriage was annulled, she married Ignacy Paderewski, whom she had known for many years and whose disabled son, Alfred, she had cared for. Alfred had suffered from polio since infancy, his mother having passed away shortly after his birth. Helena and Ignacy settled in their newly acquired estate, Riond-Bosson, near Morges on Lake Geneva, Switzerland. However, their extensive travels meant they only spent a few months there every year.

The outbreak of the First World War in 1914 reignited hopes for independence in Polish society. The Paderewskis were vigorous champions of the Polish cause, and they leveraged the extensive social and political connections that Ignacy commanded as a world-renowned virtuoso. It was mainly due to his influence that U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, in his famous proposal for ensuring a just and lasting peace following the Allied victory in the First World War, argued that „an independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant.”

During the Great War, Helena Paderewska worked tirelessly in the United States to support those affected by the conflict in Polish territories and soldiers serving in the Polish Army in France, otherwise known as the Blue Army. She organised care packages, and in early February 1918, she established the Polish White Cross, a charitable organisation she led. Her husband supported this cause by holding concerts and other cultural events to raise funds. Helena Paderewska’s relentless dedication to the Polish cause was recognised even during the war, and a medical train serving the front lines in eastern Lesser Poland was named in her honour. Another iconic service to the nation was her „Helena Paderewska Dolls” tiny rag dolls dressed in traditional Polish folk costumes, sold to raise funds for an artists’ support fund. These dolls became popular among America’s cultural elite, and are now preserved in the Polish Museum of America in Chicago.

She continued her work after Poland regained independence. By that time, she was the wife of a renowned artist and the Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Second Polish Republic, a position Ignacy Paderewski assumed in 1919. She actively supported the Polish branch of the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), the world’s largest and oldest women’s organisation, and was an honorary member of the Polish Women’s Alliance of America. Additionally, she co-founded the Intelligentsia Assistance Society, which aimed to support an impoverished Polish Christian intelligentsia in the Poznań region, and founded a girls’ school at Julin. In 1921, she was honoured by Pope Benedict XV with the Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice cross. She also pursued rather unique interests: she excelled at pedigree poultry breeding at her Swiss residence, Riond-Bosson, where she won over three hundred Swiss and international awards. This passion led her to organise poultry-farming courses for Polish women. In independent Poland, she founded a school for poultry farming and household management, which she later bequeathed to the Central Agricultural Society in Warsaw.

Towards the end of her life, Helena Paderewska fell seriously ill, which led her husband to cancel his winter tour of the United States. She passed away on 16 January 1934 at the Paderewskis’ estate in Switzerland, and was buried in a shared grave with her stepson, Alfred. After a period of mourning, Ignacy Paderewski resumed his concert tours and re-engaged in political activity. He survived his wife by seven years, passing away in New York in June 1941. In accordance with his wishes, Paderewski’s heart remained in the United States, while his body was to be buried in a free Poland, a wish fulfilled only in 1992. On the fifty-first anniversary of his death, his remains were transferred to Poland aboard a US military aircraft. Paderewski was interred at Warsaw’s Archcathedral Basilica of Saint John the Baptist, beside Henryk Sienkiewicz.