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About the Author
Halina Donimirski-Szyrmer (1918-2008) was a Polish social activist and World War II resistance fighter who served as a medic in the Home Army under the pseudonym "Halszka." Born into the prominent Donimirski family of landed gentry in East Prussia, she became involved in Polish educational work from a young age and later studied at the Warsaw School of Economics. During WWII, while her parents were imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps, she participated in underground teaching and joined the Warsaw resistance, providing medical care to wounded partisans and civilians at the Maltese Hospital and serving as a paramedic during the Warsaw Uprising. After the war, she married Captain Józef Szyrmer and received numerous military honors, including the Knight's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta and the Cross of Valor.