Henryka had a difficult childhood. She was born in a prison in Gdańsk. It was her father who was to be in prison as a political prisoner. But he fled. Henryka’s mother – then pregnant with her - did not want to give her husband away and decided to go to prison instead of him for a couple of months. Her two older brothers went to an orphanage.

Henryka’s father was not a criminal, he was imprisoned for political reasons. He suffered a lot in three concentration camps during World War II. After the war, he came back as a human wreck. He started drinking alcohol. He worked for a while. He was a handyman. Sometimes he worked as a stoker. He always took Henryka with him to help him dump coke.

Her father died when she was 13 years old. Now, it was her mother who was drinking. Henryka was sent to an orphanage. She came back home when she was 18 years old to take care of her younger sister and help her mother. They barely lived by. She felt worse than her peers.

She finished a vocational school for typists. At first she worked in an office. When she was 20 years old, she took tram-driving lessons and became a tram driver in Gdańsk. She was able to work 13 hours a day to support her family.

In the 1970’s in the socialist Poland with controlled economy, one could not buy basic things such as butter, cheese, flour, eggs or vegetables. In July 1980, the price of meat and gasoline increased again. Information about consecutive strikes spread. The tempers rose among tram drivers, but before Henryka had heard many conversations that led to nothing. The authorities reacted to the slightest signs of protest and dismissed people involved in the opposition from their jobs.

One morning when she was driving her tram, she heard from one of her passengers that the Gdańsk Shipyards – the biggest workplace in the city – stopped working. A twenty-year-old made a courageous decision. She stopped her tram at the main intersection next to Opera Bałtycka – subsequently, all trams in the city had to come to a halt. The passengers applauded.

The whole city stopped. Many people could not come to work. The authorities turned telephones off, but everybody had already known about the strikes. Tram and bus facilities began their strikes in solidarity with the shipyard workers.

Henryka went to the Gdańsk Shipyards to convey the good news. She came when Lech Wałęsa, the shipyards workers’ leader, was announcing that the talks with the management were successful. He was saying the strike was over. She had to do something! She forced her way through the workers to Wałęsa and shouted that he betrayed them. If the shipyards end the strike, the authorities will destroy smaller workplaces like bedbugs.

Wałęsa began panicking. The decision to continue the strike was quickly made. But the radio was turned off and most workers were going towards the exit hurrying home. Three workers of the shipyards together with Henryka forced their way to the gate calling the workers to stay. They managed to stop a few hundred workers.

Henryka Krzywonos became a member of a new strike committee which represented all striking workplaces in Gdańsk. After a week, there were four hundred of them. An unknown tram driver made it possible for the August protest to turn into a movement for social change. A young and cowed girl, who lacked self-confidence, became part of the strike madness and great history.

When negotiating strikers’ postulates, she was one of the most obstinate people from the Solidarity movement. She even showed to Lech Wałęsa a very offensive bent-elbow gesture, when he wanted to give up the postulate that all political prisoners should be released. She managed to keep it. The most important leaders of the Solidarity movement went out of prisons.

In 1987, Henryka learned she suffered from cancer. Doctors predicted that she would live only a year or two. She is still alive. She has her own family orphanage. She has not found a place for herself in politics. She did not want to fight for posts. Only in an article published 20 years after the strike, was it reminded that she was one of the three women who signed the agreement at the end of the strike in 1980. She has become engaged in the public sphere again, supports feminists, and takes part in feminist protests.

Someone wrote that Henryka is a feminist in an African way. ‘She fights for her cause in the private sector. In Africa, feminism assumes that children have to be fed, dressed and sent to school. She is a heroine in the public and private sectors, heroine of the people.’

Henryka Krzywonos was recognized as the woman of the last twenty years by Women’s Congress – the biggest female initiative in Poland.