Bronisława Wieniawa-Długoszowska

Bronisława Wieniawa-Długoszowska (1886 to 1953), born Kliatchkin, was a Polish nurse of Russian Jewish origin whose life crossed several wars and revolutions. She finished a gymnasium in Łodź in 1903 and studied medicine in Paris before 1914. When the First World War began she volunteered as a nurse at the Hotel Continental in Paris, where she nursed a wounded French officer, Pierre Laurent, and later worked with him in Petrograd on information about the Russian army and the Bolsheviks. In 1918 she escaped Russia on a false French passport, having earlier persuaded the Cheka to release the Polish officer Bolesław Wieniawa-Długoszowski into house arrest. They married in 1919 and she accompanied him when he became Polish ambassador to Italy in 1938, then fled with him to New York in 1940. She returned to Europe after the war and died in Paris in August 1953 after a gall bladder operation. Her entry rests on her service as a wartime nurse; her wider political role is described in the cited article.