The City Council of Gliwice, southern Poland, where she lived for several decades, said: “This morning, Tekla Juniewicz, Poland’s oldest woman in history, the oldest inhabitant of the Silesian province, the second-oldest person in the world, and, first and foremost, an extraordinary woman of great heart and strong character, passed away. She was 116 years, 2 months and 6 days old.”
Juniewicz is remembered by City Council staff as "a very active person who did not like stagnation."
She "liked films, watching historical programmes, playing cards, reading, flowers, gardening, travel and good company,” according to the City Council of Gliwice.
"She loved her family, with whom she had very strong bonds," it said.
Juniewicz was born in Krupsk, near Lviv in today’s Ukraine, on June 10, 1906.
She remembered the time when Poland was partitioned between three neighbouring powers, Russia, Austria and Prussia.
Juniewicz was 12 when Poland regained independence in 1918.
At the age of 21, she married Jan Juniewicz, 22 years her senior, and they moved to Borislav, in present-day Ukraine, where her husband worked in the crude oil industry.
After World War II, the Juniewicz family was repatriated from what was then Soviet territory to Gliwice.
Juniewicz is survived by daughter Urszula, born in 1929.
Her first daughter, Janina, born in 1928, died in 2016.
She is also survived by five grandchildren, four great-grandchildren and four great-great-grandchildren.
Her youngest great-great-granddaughter, Iga, was born a year ago, on Juniewicz’s 115th birthday.
The world's oldest living person is Frenchwoman Lucile Randon, born on February 11, 1904.
(mk/gs)