The talk was addressed to the Polish-American community. Attendees had the opportunity to learn little-known facts about the lives and legal careers of the first women of Polish descent. The presentation was based on a publication by Renata Wiaderna-Kuśnierz, PhD, featured in *Palestra* No. 12 from 2024, entitled ‘The First Polish Women Practising as Lawyers in the Press of the Time’.
The meeting was attended by the management of the Józef Piłsudski Institute, led by the Chair and Executive Director, Iwona Korga, PhD, and the Vice-Chair, Artur Kowalski, PhD, accompanied by his wife, Katarzyna Kowalska, PhD, the Director of Development, Magdalena Orlicka-So, and the Administrative Assistant, Ewelina Godlewska. Also present were representatives of the legal profession, including women who had completed their law degrees but, having emigrated to the USA in the 1980s, had not returned to practise law.
A special guest at the meeting was Ewa Hoffman-Jędruch, PhD, Vice-President of the Piłsudski Institute in America, born in 1938 in Lviv, who, after being displaced during the war through the Asian part of the Soviet Union, settled initially in Argentina and subsequently emigrated to the USA. At the end of the meeting, Ewa Hoffman-Jędruch, PhD, took the floor and recounted the story of her mother, Zofia Neuhoff, who was one of the first women to graduate with a law degree from the Jan Kazimierz University in Lviv and who subsequently ran a law firm together with her husband, Maksymilian Hoffman, PhD. Following the meeting, there were calls for the need to further raise awareness of this as yet little-known subject.
