She was arrested by German occupiers in Lviv for allowing secret activities to take place in her apartment and was murdered in the Majdanek concentration camp near Lublin, Poland, in 1942.
Her father, Adam, took part in the Polish revolt called the January Uprising and spent years in exile in France where he completed medical studies.
The remaining family stayed in Lviv where Helena and her older sister Maria Polaczkówna, took on private tutoring assignments to earn enough money to afford their education.
She earned her doctorate in 1909 with a dissertation titled: “De Lumbres, the French Ambassador and His Diplomatic Mission to Poland in the Times of the Potop (Flood) 1656–1660” (supervised by A.-M.
Their apartment became a contact point for secret couriers and messengers of the Information and Propaganda Bureau of Home Army Headquarters, a system of asylum and safe places where illegal publications could be produced.