Alfreda Markowska

Alfreda Noncia Markowska (10 May 1926 – 30 January 2021) was a Polish-Romani woman who during World War II saved approximately fifty Jewish and Roma children from death in the Holocaust and the Porajmos genocide.

Markowska was born in a travelling Polska Roma tabor (a mobile camp) in an area around Stanisławów, in the Kresy region of the Second Polish Republic.

[1] After the war, the communist authorities of the People's Republic of Poland initiated a campaign to force the Roma to settle and abandon their traditional lifestyle.

[2] In October 2006, Alfreda Markowska was awarded the Commander's Cross with Star of the Order of Polonia Restituta for saving Jewish and Roma children during World War II.

At that time, then-President of Poland Lech Kaczyński commended her "for heroism and uncommon bravery, for exceptional merit in saving human lives".

Alfreda Markowska at the ceremony where she was awarded the Order of Polonia Restituta by the then president of Poland, Lech Kaczyński