Barbara Drapczyńska

Who was Barbara Drapczyńska?

Barbara Stanisława Drapczyńska was a wife of Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński, and a student of Polish Philology at the secret Warsaw University, during German occupation of Warsaw.

Drapczyńska's father had a printing shop at Piękna Street in Warsaw. She met her future husband on December 1, 1941. A year later, they engaged. The wedding took place on June 3, 1942 at 10 am in a Roman Catholic church in the district of Solec. After the ceremony they lived together, Barbara was Baczyński's muse, he wrote several erotic poems dedicated to her.

She died pregnant on September 1, 1944, during the Warsaw Uprising, struck in the head by a splinter of glass, which damaged the brain. At the moment of death, she had in her hands the Kennkarte of her husband as well as his book. Baczyński had foreseen this in a poem written a few weeks earlier, on July 13, 1944. According to witnesses, Barbara was struck on August 26, she suffered badly for a few days. She never found out that her husband had been killed in the early days of the Uprising.