She was born in Vienna into a family of assimilated Jews. Her father Joseph Berlinerblau was the owner of the “Stradom” jute products factory in Cz\u0119stochowa. In 1920, she graduated from law school in Warsaw and two years later married Emil Steinsberg, a respected lawyer from Krakow. She was one of the first women in Poland to be qualified in the legal profession. She belonged to the Union of Socialist Lawyers and often defended workers for taking part in political riots.<\/p>\n
During World War II, she hid with her husband in Warsaw. She was a member of the conspiratorial Polish Socialist Party Freedom-Egality-Independence and participated in the activities of the “\u017begota” Jewish Aid Council. In 1943, she lost her husband, who was accidentally caught up in a street round-up.<\/p>\n
After the war, she belonged to the Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR), from which she was expelled in 1953. In 1955, she took part in the trial of Kazimierz Moczarski, who was sentenced to life imprisonment on false charges. It was the first trial in communist-ruled Poland in which lawyers accused security ministry functionaries of coercing confessions by torture. It was followed by other cases: the rehabilitation of Home Army soldiers, cases of people publishing in \u00e9migr\u00e9 periodicals.<\/p>\n
In 1968, she pledged to defend students free of charge for their participation in the March strikes and demonstrations, for which she was suspended and, in 1970, removed from the list of lawyers. She was one of the initiators of Letter 59 against the inclusion in the Constitution of the People’s Republic of Poland of the leading role of PZPR and the perpetual alliance with the Soviet Union. In 1976, she co-founded the Workers’ Defence Committee. Steinbergowa provided legal advice, distributed leaflets with the KOR declaration, and acted as an intermediary between the authorities and imprisoned activists who were urged to emigrate.<\/p>\n
Aniela Steinsbergowa was also involved in translations, e.g. she translated Claude L\u00e9vi Strauss’s Sadness of the Tropics and Totemism, as well as other French scientific works. She died on 22 December 1988.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the 1970s, it was said in jest that the real age of the lawyer Aniela Steinsbergowa was the most closely guarded secret of the Workers’ Defence Committee (KOR). Like…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":36477,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history"],"yoast_head":"\n