Aleksandra Piłsudska

Who was Aleksandra Piłsudska?

Aleksandra Piłsudska, née Szczerbińska, was the second wife of Józef Piłsudski.

Aleksandra was born December 12, 1882, in Suwałki, in the Suwałki Governorate, Russian Empire, and was the seventh child of Piotr Paweł and Julia Jadwiga, née Zahorska.

Aleksandra's father was a townsman, and her mother came from the nobility, but both their families were relatively poor. Aleksandra's parents died when she was ten years old, and the orphan was raised by her grandmother, Karolina Zahorska, née Truskolaska and her aunt, Wiktoria Maria Zahorska.

She attended gymnasium, the equivalent of high school, in Suwałki, graduating in 1901, and soon began her studies at the Flying University. In 1903 she began working in the office of the Homa leather factory, located in the Wola district of Warsaw.

In 1904 she joined the Polish Socialist Party, one of the two main revolutionary and political movements in partitioned Poland, the other being National Democracy. She was soon acting as a PPS agitator in the Warsaw suburb of Praga, taking part in a demonstration held on Plac Grzybowski on November 13, 1904.