The woman’s identity was established only recently after the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) in March 2021 posted a photo of her standing in front of Buckingham Palace in Polish uniform and holding a decoration awarded to her husband by British King George VI.
Thanks to the efforts of internet users, researchers and history buffs in both Poland and the UK, it was established that the woman in the photo was Maria Barr-Grabowska, then 20 years old.
Barr-Grabowska was born in 1923 in Grodno (now in Belarus), attended school in Vilnius (now in Lithuania), and met her first husband in 1940 on a Polish ship, which evacuated the man after the fall of France attacked by the German army.
In December 1941, she and Philip Rex Barr were married at a Catholic church in Glasgow. The photo was taken in 1943, at a time when Maria Barr was working at a Polish Red Cross facility in Edinburgh.
Her husband, who served as commander of the British Royal Air Force's RAF 107 Squadron, was considered missing then. His death was officially declared in 1946.
In April 1947, Maria Barr married a Polish émigré architect named Stanisław Grabowski. They had a son.
Barr-Grabowska died in 2018 at the age of 95, fourteen years after her second husband, but the urn with her ashes was laid in the grave at London’s Gunnersbury Cemetery only now, following Wednesday’s memorial service at the Church of Saint Andrew Bobola.
The film Girl from the Photo was directed by Bogna Bender-Motyka. Among those interviewed for the film about the life of Barr-Grabowska and the identification of the 1943 photo were members of her family and history enthusiasts.
Produced by TVP Polonia, the film will be shown on that Polish public television’s channel on October 5.
(mk/gs)