Stanislawa Calinski

Stanislawa (Stella) Calinska was born April 8, 1925 in a small town near Lublin, Poland. As a young child she grew up with the parents and four sisters and one brother. The family had a farm where they grew strawberries, potatoes and wheat. During WWI her father was forced to join the Tsarist army for five years.

During the inter-war years, between WW1 and WW2, Stella attended school and helped out on the farm. When she entered her teens on September 1, 1939 Germany attacked Poland.

During the mid-1930’s Stella and her older sister Jadwiga went to Warsaw looking for work where she stayed during most of the Nazi occupation. During this time life was difficult, but the war was mostly taking place in the USSR since the Nazis invaded Russia. That lasted until the Soviets started to successfully attack the Nazis. Now the major part of the war was coming closer to home and Stella, along with others, had to decide what to do next.

In 1944, during the Warsaw Uprising, she joined the underground army, known in English as the “Home Army.” During this two-month period of the Uprising, Stella was ordered to make home made bombs called Molotov cocktails to use against the enemy. Also, at this time she was carrying food and supplies from station to station while under fire from land and air, also providing aid in hospitals. Food was scarce, sometimes being only one loaf of bread per week.

Stella of course found herself and her fellows betrayed by England. When the surrender came, the survivors of the Home Army were captured by the Nazi army and put in cattle railroad cars to be sent to labor camps. She and her two sisters managed to escape when the train slowed down approaching the station in the evening.

When the war ended, Poland was then occupied by the Soviets, so Stella, along with her surviving family joined in the effort to rebuild the war-torn country. She then married and started a family with Elizabeth being her only child.

Stella started a boutique shop to make ends meet and to develop her seamstress skills. Owning a private boutique in communist Poland was not made easy by the government.

In 1970 she moved to New York City and after various jobs landed a position organizing offices for attorneys and businesspeople, all the while keeping her seamstress skills sharp.

In the meantime, her daughter, Elizabeth moved to New York for a short time but eventually ended up in Petaluma, by way of San Francisco, attending the Academy of Arts College.

Eventually Stella joined her daughter and her husband in Petaluma to start her retirement.

Then in July, 2007, after the collapse of communism, the Polish government awarded her with a military medal and commendation, along with a promotion to lieutenant for her service in defending a free Poland.

Stella passed away on Sunday, July 17, 2022 in Petaluma. Her cremated remains will be sent to Poland where she will have a funeral mass with the urn placed in the family plot afterwards. A special representative of the Polish government will be attending the service, as well as Fr. Kryzstof Lewandowski, associate pastor at St. Rose Church (and a dear, close friend) along with the family and friends in Poland.

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