Stanisław and Helena Sierakowski. Polish patriots from Waplitz.

Helena actively supported her husband by undertaking charitable duties in the school system in Warmia and the Vistula Valley. She was particularly interested in Polish lessons for children and young people. She was one of the founders and members of a huge number of organisations including the Society of Christian Women under the Patronage of St. Kunigund (Towarzystwo Kobiet Chrześcijańskich pod wezwaniem świętej Kingi) and the Polish Catholic School Club in the Vistula Valley in Western Prussia (Polsko-Katolickie Towarzystwo Szkolne na Powiślu).

At the end of the First World War Stanisław Sierakowski fought for the inclusion of this area in Poland, and in this connection he appeared in many functions. Around the turn of 1918/19 he was the chairman of the Polish Peoples Council (Rada Ludowa) in Stuhm, and a member of the sub-Commissioner’s office of the supreme People’s Council for the Royal Prussian Regions of Warmia and Masuria, whose headquarters were in Danzig. In December 1918 he was delegated to the Provincial Parliament in Poznan. He fulfilled all these duties in an exemplary fashion, thereby winning the trust of the government in Warsaw who gave him further duties in the following years. In 1919 the Polish government appointed him as head official responsible for the referendum in Warmia and Masuria. In 1920 in 1921 he was the General Consul of the Republic of Poland in Kwidzyn. In 1919 he was one of three Polish experts who took part in the conference at Versailles to prepare the referendum in Warmia, Masuria and the Vistula Valley. During this time he was host to many important personalities from home and abroad in his residence in Waplitz: these included the Apostolic Nuncio in Warsaw, Achille Ratti, the writers Jan Kasprowicz and Stefan Żeromski, and the composer Feliks Nowowiejski. In 1922 Stanisław and Helena Sierakowski were rewarded with the Order of Polonia Restituta for their work in the referendum campaign.

The vote went against Poland and Waplitz was to remain in Germany. True the Sierakowski family, like other estate owners in the Vistula Valley, were given the opportunity of leaving Poland as part of a land exchange, but they refused to do so. Quite the opposite, they increased their efforts to develop the areas of culture and education and committed themselves to improving the condition of Poles in Germany. Helena Sierakowska was one of the cofounders of the League of Poles in Eastern Prussia (Związek Polaków w Prusach Wschodnich), which was created on 30th November 1920 in Olsztyn. The new organisation soon had around 3000 members, of which 1800 came from the Vistula Valley. The following was one of the aims:

To protect the interests of the Polish minority, and strive to improve the welfare of the Polish people (…) especially to promote the League of Poles in their efforts to achieve all its just demands for the Polish inhabitants (…). The League of Poles is the representative of all Poles irrespective of their social class.