Malgorzata Fornalska

(party pseudonym Jasia). Born June 10, 1902, in the village of Fajslawice, Lubelszczyna; died July 26, 1944, in Pawiak Prison, Warsaw. Figure in the Polish working-class movement.

During World War I, Fornalska was evacuated to Tsaritsyn, where in 1918 she joined the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania. In 1918–19 she fought first with the 1st Tsaritsyn Communist Battalion and then with the Red Army. Returning to Poland in 1921, she joined the Communist Party of Poland (CPP). Fornalska was repeatedly subjected to persecution. From 1926 to 1934 she was in the USSR, where she worked in the Peasant International and in the Executive Committee of the Communist International. She returned to Poland in 1934 and joined a number of district committees of the CPP. In 1936 she became a member of the secretariat of the International Organization for Aid to Fighters for the Revolution.

From 1939 to 1941, Fornalska was a schoolteacher in Bialystok. In late 1941 she joined the Initiative Group of Polish Communists, which was organized in the USSR in 1941, and was transferred to Warsaw in May 1942. She was a member of the Central Committee of the Polish Workers’ Party. Fornalska was arrested by the Gestapo on Nov. 14, 1943; she was tortured and shot.