Lanckorońska bequeathed her family's enormous art collection to Poland only after her homeland became free from communism and Soviet domination during the Revolutions of 1989.

Reared and educated in Vienna (capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, of which much of partitioned Poland was a part), where she attended university.

[1][2] Lanckorońska was active in the Polish resistance and was arrested, interrogated, tortured, tried and sentenced to death at Stanisławów prison.

During her stay there, the local Gestapo chief Hans Krueger (also spelled Krüger), confessed to her that he had murdered 23 Lwów University professors, a war crime that she made it her mission to publicize.

The book, whose British version is titled Those Who Trespass against Us: One Woman's War against the Nazis, sold over 50,000 copies in the Polish original and is now selling well in English.