Solidarity activist Walentynowicz statue unveiled

“She was one of the bravest activists of the democratic opposition,” President Andrzej Duda wrote in a letter read out at the ceremony.

Cast in bronze, the statue depicts a standing Anna Walentynowicz in Gdańsk-Wrzeszcz next to the house where she lived for many years.

The monument was unveiled by Walentynowicz’s son, Janusz, and her grandchildren.

One of Duda’s chief advisers, Maciej Łopiński, read out the president’s words.

"Anna Walentynowicz played a very important role in recent Polish history. She was a courageous democratic opposition activist, whose most strongly fought against the communist security apparatus. Thanks to the research of historians today we know that her surveillance was handled by more than 100 officers and secret collaborators of the security services. She bore this all with admirable steadfastness and determination, determined to fight to the very end of totalitarianism and rights for every human being," the president wrote.

Her sacking in August 1980 was the event that ignited the strike at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk, setting off a wave of strikes in Poland.

Walentynowicz's arrest became an organising slogan (“Bring Anna Walentynowicz Back to Work!”) in the early days of the Gdańsk strike.

Anna Walentynowicz was among the victims of the fatal crash of the presidential plane at Smolensk airport in Russia in April 2010. (jh/rk)