Alfreda Markowska

{{Infobox person | name = Alfreda Noncia Markowska | image = Alfreda Markowska Noncia.jpg | image_size = 250px | caption = Alfreda Noncia Markowska | birth_date = {{Birth date|1926|5|10}} | death_date = {{Death date and age|2021|1|30|1926|5|10}} | birth_place = Poland | known_for = Rescuing Jewish and Roma children during World War II | awards = Order of Polonia Restituta }}

'''Alfreda Noncia Markowska''' (10 May 1926 – 30 January 2021) was a Polish-Romani woman who during World War II saved approximately fifty Jewish and Roma children from death in the Holocaust and the Porajmos genocide.

==Biography== Markowska was born in a travelling Polska Roma ''tabor'' (a mobile camp) in an area around Stanisławów (Ivano-Frankivsk), in the Kresy region of the Second Polish Republic.<ref name="Romowie" /> Her father, Jan, was a horse trader, and her mother, Adel, practiced palmistry; both were members of the nomadic Polska Roma community.<ref>{{Cite web |date=16 May 2021 |title=Even in hell, she chose good: Alfreda Markowska, the Polish Romani woman who saved Jewish and Romani children from the Nazis |url=https://romea.cz/en/world/even-in-hell-she-chose-good-alfreda-markowska-the-polish-romani-woman-who-saved-jewish-and-romani-children-from-the-nazis |access-date=9 June 2025 |website=Romea.cz}}</ref>

In 1939, the German invasion of Poland caught her in Lwów (Lviv). After the Soviet Union also invaded Poland as part of the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact between Stalin and Hitler, her tabor moved to the German occupied part of Poland. In 1941 the Germans murdered all the members of her family (65 to 85 people), including her parents and siblings, in a massacre near Biała Podlaska.<ref name="Romowie" /> Alfreda was the only one to survive, as she traveled to a local village to buy food that morning. There, a woman warned her against going back to the ''tabor'' and told her to hide in her barn.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Konopka |first=Blanka |date=11 April 2022 |title=A Saint in Hell: Babcia Noncia, the Polish Romani Woman Who Saved Children from Nazi Germans |url=https://culture.pl/en/article/a-saint-in-hell-babcia-noncia-the-polish-romani-woman-who-saved-children-from-nazi-germans |access-date=9 June 2025 |work=Culture.pl |publisher=Adam Mickiewicz Institute}}</ref>

She spent several days searching the local forests for the mass grave of her family. She made her way to Rozwadów where in 1942, at the age of 16, she married. She and her husband were caught in a street roundup while visiting Stanisławów by Ukrainian police who handed them over to the Germans, but the couple managed to escape. Subsequently, they were forced to move into Roma ghettos in Lublin, Łódź, and Bełżec but they fled these as well and settled back in Rozwadów, where the Germans had organized a labor camp for Roma.<ref name="Romowie">{{cite journal | url=http://www.romowie.com/romano_atmo/ra_5.pdf | title=Piękne życie Alfredy Markowskiej | author=Gierliński, K. | journal=Romano Atmo | date=October 2006 | issue=5 | pages=10–11 | access-date=2014-01-31 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091210204102/http://www.romowie.com/romano_atmo/ra_5.pdf | archive-date=2009-12-10 | url-status=dead }}</ref>

===Rescue missions=== In Rozwadów, Alfreda was hired on the railway and managed to obtain a work permit (''Kennkarte'') which gave her some protection against further arrests. She became involved in saving Jews and Roma, particularly children, from death at the hands of the Nazis. She would travel to sites of known massacres of Jewish and Roma populations and look for survivors. Markowska would bring them back to her home, hide them and obtain false documents which protected them from the Germans. She personally saved an estimated 50 children.<ref name="Romowie"/> Years later, when asked why she was not afraid to help, Markowska stated that at the time she did not expect to live through the war herself anyway, so fear was not an issue.<ref name="wys"/>

In 1944 the Soviets liberated the area. Because of the policy of the Red Army to forcibly conscript Roma into its ranks, Markowska along with her husband and some of the children she had saved (including some German children who sought to flee Soviet soldiers) fled westward, first into central Poland and then into the so-called "Recovered Territories" in what is now western Poland.<ref name="Romowie"/>

After the war, the communist authorities of the People's Republic of Poland initiated a campaign to force the Roma to settle and abandon their traditional lifestyle. As a result, she and her family lived first near Poznań - in Przeźmierowo<ref>{{Cite web|title=Wyborcza.pl|url=https://www.wysokieobcasy.pl/wysokie-obcasy/1,96856,13640351,Alfreda_Markowska_zwana_Noncia.html?disableRedirects=true|access-date=2020-09-21|website=www.wysokieobcasy.pl|archive-date=2022-12-04|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221204064150/https://www.wysokieobcasy.pl/wysokie-obcasy/1,96856,13640351,Alfreda_Markowska_zwana_Noncia.html?disableRedirects=true|url-status=dead}}</ref> - then, after her husband's death, in Gorzów Wielkopolski.<ref name="wys">{{cite news | url=https://www.wysokieobcasy.pl/wysokie-obcasy/1,96856,13640351,Alfreda_Markowska_zwana_Noncia.html?as=2 | title=Alfreda Markowska zwana Nońcią | work=Gazeta Wyborcza - Wysokie Obcasy | date=8 April 2013 | accessdate=6 February 2014 | author=Szabłowski, Witold | pages=1–3}}</ref>

In October 2006, Alfreda Markowska was awarded the Commander's Cross with Star of the Order of Polonia Restituta for saving Jewish and Roma children during World War II. At that time, then-President of Poland Lech Kaczyński commended her "for heroism and uncommon bravery, for exceptional merit in saving human lives".<ref name="pk">{{cite web | url=http://www.pk.org.pl/artykul.php?id=167 | title=Alfreda Markowska: Bohaterka trzech narodów (A Heroine of Three Nations) | publisher=Panorama Kultur | accessdate=4 February 2014 | author=Caban, Agnieszka Mirosława | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140201215951/http://www.pk.org.pl/artykul.php?id=167 | archive-date=1 February 2014 | url-status=dead }}</ref>

Markowska died on 30 January 2021, at the age of 94.<ref>[https://www.radiogorzow.pl/110752/110752/ Nie żyje babcia Nońcia] {{in lang|pl}}</ref>

==References== {{Reflist}} {{Commons category-inline}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Markowska, Alfreda}} Category:Polish Romani people Category:1926 births Category:2021 deaths Category:People from Ivano-Frankivsk Category:Romani Holocaust survivors Category:Polish Holocaust survivors Category:Commanders with Star of the Order of Polonia Restituta Category:People of the Romani Holocaust Category:Polish people who rescued Jews during the Holocaust Category:20th-century Polish women