Zaborowska, Janina

Dr. Janina Zaborowska was born in Kiev, Ukraine, in 1918. Her father was a commandant of the underground Polish army in the Ukraine who died in 1925. Her mother was a mathematician who became an accountant in the Polish Red Cross Central Office. Her family went to Warsaw in December 1922, where she finished high school in 1937 and got into medical school of Warsaw University the same year. In 1938, She married her husband Eugene Zaborowski, who was an officer in the Polish army. After the outbreak of the war her husband was captured and prisoned in a concentration camp in the Gulag Archipelago until 1943. In the meantime, Dr. Zaborowska was in Warsaw and involved in the Girl Guide, an underground organization. In 1939 she worked as a nurse in the field hospital and became a bath woman on the clean side in 1940. Following that she was appointed to run a scabies clinic till 1944, when the uprising started. She was also in charge of Warsaw Communication Services and became involved with the Intelligence Service as a secretary to one of the chiefs of the districts in 1943. She was also the commandant of the communications for the whole Warsaw between 1942-1944. She was in the camp at Bergen-Belsen until they were released in 1945 by Canadian and American forces. After the war, Dr. Zaborowska went to Brussels in 1945 to work with the Red Cross before she received a scholarship and entered the university of Brussels to continue her medical study. She reunited with her in Brussels. They came to Canada, living in Oakville, Ontario, and had two children there.