Klaudyna Potocka (nee Działyńska)

A patriot and social activist. Born in 1801 in Kórnik. She was educated in Konarzewo near Poznań and in Paris. She participated in the November Uprising by organizing help and care for wounded soldiers, creating lazarettos and working in hospitals. After the fall of the Uprising she went to Drezno where she founded the Polish Ladies Committee of Charity thus organizing protection for the emigrants.  

In order to gain money for that cause she sold her jewels and kept organizing concerts or the evenings with literature. Refugees, like for example Adam Mickiewicz, Stegan Garczyński, Ignacy Domeyko or Wincenty Pol, were calling her a “Guardian Angel” of the emigrants. In 1833 she moved to Geneva to help Polish people there as well. She was considered by them as the model of an ideal Polish patriot. She died in 1836 in Geneva and was buried there. In 1879 her ashes were moved into the tomb of General Władysław Zamoyski on a cemetry in Montmorency near Paris.