Zofia Rysiówna

Zofia Rysiówna, married Zofia Rysiówna-Hanuszkiewicz, (17 May 1920 – 17 November 2003) was a Polish actress. Zofia Rysiówna was one of the legends of Polish theatre. She studied at the State School of Drama in Warsaw in 1938. However, the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 ended her official training early. First, she continued her training underground, but in 1940 joined the Polish Home Army in opposition to the German occupation. She worked primarily as a courier and participated in the liberation of Jan Karski from the hands of the Gestapo. In 1941 she was imprisoned and was deported to the Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany. She remained in Ravensbrück until the liberation in 1945 and then returned to Poland. She immediately took the external exam in front of the theatre commission and became a theater actress. On 30 October 1945 she finally made her debut at the Słowacki Theatre in Krakow.In the early 1950s she went from Krakow to Poznan, where she worked with her later husband Adam Hanuszkiewicz as a director. From 1955 she worked on different Warsaw stages. Here she developed into one of the great tragedy women of the Polish theatre She achieved greater popularity mainly through her regular appearances in Polish theater television in the 1960s.