Sister Jolanta (Karolina Bajak) has passed away

It is with deep sadness that we received the news of the death of Sister Jolanta (Karolina Bajak), whose life was marked by the experience of exile and, subsequently, many years of service to others.

She was born on February 1, 1926, in Podolia. On February 10, 1940, she was deported with her family deep into the USSR. After the so-called amnesty, she traveled through Iran and arrived at the Polish refugee settlement of Tengeru in what was then Tanganyika (now Tanzania). It was there that she decided to become a missionary.

In Africa, she joined the Congregation of the Sisters Servants of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In 1945, she arrived in Kasisi, in present-day Zambia, where she cared for orphaned children for decades. She devoted her entire life to serving others.

In 2026, for her outstanding missionary and social work, she was awarded the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta.

For our Center, Sister Jolanta will remain an extremely important witness to history. In 2015, in Zambia, during a research expedition by the Center for the Documentation of Exiles, Expulsions, and Resettlements (UKEN) in Kraków, Prof. Hubert Chudzio and Dr. Mariusz Solarz conducted and recorded an interview with her. Her memoirs constitute a valuable part of the Center’s oral history archive.

We bid farewell to an extraordinary woman, a missionary who for decades brought aid to those most in need.

May she rest in peace!