The event will be preceded by a performance of the play Maria, based on the extraordinary life of Kwaśniewska-Maleszewska, who was not only a sports champion, but a wartime hero who saved hundreds of people from imminent death.
Maria Kwaśniewska-Maleszewska, née Kwaśniewska, won the bronze medal in the women's javelin for Poland at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin.
The gold and silver medals went to German athletes. All the medalists were invited to Hitler’s box to receive his congratulations.
According to historical accounts, Hitler addressed the Pole with the words: “I congratulate the little Polish woman," to which Kwaśniewska responded, "I don't feel any smaller than you."
After the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, Kwaśniewska joined Polish resistance as an ambulance driver, transporting injured soldiers to hospitals.
A photo of her 1936 meeting with Hitler proved to be a life saver for her and many other people.
In the autumn of 1944, she went to a German transit camp in Pruszków, near Warsaw, which housed civilian evacuees from the Polish capital after the fall of the Warsaw Uprising.
Having shown the guards her photo with Hitler, she was allowed to enter the camp and managed to let out groups of prisoners.
The people she saved included writers Ewa Szelburg-Zarembina and Stanisław Dygat.
Kwaśniewska was married three times. Her first marriage, to a swimmer in 1937, ended in divorce. Her ex-husband died at the beginning of World War II. Her second husband, engineer Julian Koźmiński, was killed by the Germans. Her final marriage to Polish national basketball team coach Władysław Maleszewski lasted 37 years, until her husband’s death in 1983.
Kwaśniewska-Maleszewska was an all-round athlete. In addition to the javelin, she was successful in the long jump and pentathlon. She was a member of Poland’s national team in basketball, volleyball and handball.
After the war, she returned to competitive sports, ending her career with a sixth-place finish in the javelin at the 1946 European Championships in Oslo.
She died in Warsaw on October 17, 2007 at the age of 94.
(mk/gs)