# Stefania Stadnicka née Woroniecka (1886–1963)

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Mother of Jadwiga Czartoryska; wife of Adam Stadnicki of Nawojowa

Stefania née Woroniecki, wife of Adam Stadnicki, was born on September 14, 1886 in Bielice near Warsaw, on the estate of her parents, Maria née Mańkowski and Paweł Woroniecki. She had three siblings: two brothers, Ludwik and Kazimierz, who died without heirs, and a sister Maria, who after the death of Kazimierz (Ludwik died at age sixteen) married Tadeusz Kumanowski. Education was simple and modest. Children were educated at home, as was customary at the time, especially since Russian was the language of instruction in schools, as this was Russian-occupied territory, and the manor houses were centers of Polishness. Mother taught village and farmstead children Polish as a young woman.

As a growing girl she studied singing in Kraków with the famous teacher Mr. Reszke, and had a wonderful voice (alto). However, when in 1910 she married Adam Stadnicki, she resigned from singing and devoted herself exclusively to her husband, the education of children, and running a large household. Over the course of ten years (from 1910 to 1920) she gave birth to seven children; the youngest son Paweł was born in 1925. Two daughters, Maria and Jadwiga, were born in Nawojowa. Then, when the First World War broke out in 1914, the parents transported the entire household—nannies and servants—to Frainu a.d. Thaya, in Czech Vranov na Dyji, a castle lying on a high defensive cliff near the border with Austria. Actually, at that time there was no proper border, as this was still the time of Austria-Hungary and Galicia, or Lesser Poland, belonged to the Habsburg Empire. The Russian-Austrian front passed through Galicia not far from Sącz, but the palace in Nawojowa was not damaged. Her father, whenever he could, traveled there, but for all four years of the war served as a Knight of Malta on trains carrying wounded from the front to hospitals on the home front. When he had a few days off he would appear in Frainu, and sometimes her mother would meet him in Vienna. The Frainu palace was then full of refugees from Poland, as the parents invited them to stay. So the Witold Czartoryski family came to stay in Frainu with their large family. Thus it fell to her mother to maintain the household and provision the house and kitchen. She even went to the forest to hunt game for meat. In the years 1914 to 1916 three daughters were born—Helena, Anna (Danusia), and Stefcia. In 1918 we returned to Nawojowa. Mother was an expert in gardening and bee-keeping, so with good staff selection everything functioned excellently. During the crisis years the parents did what they could so the farm would not fail; they introduced economies and although sons Józef, Andrzej, and Paweł were born into the world, the estates survived without loss until better times. They raised eight children, educated them, and helped the surrounding population in difficult times and misfortunes. Before the war they gave two daughters in marriage, and a third already during the war in 1940. During the German occupation, Nawojowa became a shelter for many people expelled from the so-called Reich, i.e., the Poznań region, and most importantly a transhipment point for those who were crossing the border to join the Polish army and the Allies fighting the Germans. Never fewer than twenty people sat at the table then, and the entire provisioning and maintenance of these crowds fell on our mother. Besides, she was president of the RGO (Central Welfare Council) in Nowy Sącz; she was the heart and mind of this organization, sending food packages to prisoner of war camps and prisons. She rode to Sącz on horseback, as cars were immediately requisitioned at the beginning of the war. In the house the entire young family was engaged in the resistance movement. Józio, though paralyzed, was the commander of a posting and had hidden a radio transmitting apparatus through which they communicated with London. Mother knew about everything and helped, hiding “burned out” partisans under false names and helped even with making homemade bombs. The Germans conducted several searches, suspecting that our house was an AK center, but never found anything. Toward the end of the war the sons had to go into hiding, because a price was set on Józio’s head for whoever betrayed him. And no such person was found.

In 1945, when the Germans fled and the Red Army arrived, they forced the parents to leave the palace. Land reform took effect and like everyone else they lost their estate and the fruits of a lifetime of work. What could be saved was transported to Krynica and there in the Villa Miła they set up living quarters where our beloved Grandmother Helena Stadnicka lived for some time. The parents spent several difficult years in Frainu, then were driven out of there as well and in 1950 returned to Poland. They lived with the Antosias (Mańkowskis) in Osolia, then alone; in winter they traveled to Kraków to the apartment of the Pawłs. In 1960 their son Józio died in a motorcycle accident, and from that time Mother slowly declined. She died on January 18, 1963 in Kraków, and was buried in the family vault in Nawojowa.