During the First World War, Zofia Wańkowicz worked for the Polish Red Cross. From 1921 to 1925 she ran the office of the trade advisor at the French embassy in Warsaw. She married the diplomat Tadeusz Romer in 1925, and from then on accompanied her husband on his trips abroad.
In 1937 Tadeusz Romer became ambassador to Japan. When the Polish Committee to Aid War Victims was founded there in 1940, Zofia Romer took on its management. The aid organization took care of Polish Jews who had fled from Lithuania via the Soviet Union with a Japanese visa. The committee provided medical care and financial support, ran soup kitchens, and helped with consular matters.
After the Polish embassy in Tokyo was closed in 1941, Zofia and Tadeusz Romer went to Shanghai. The committee continued its work there as the Union of Poles in China, supporting Polish Jews and representing them toward the Japanese authorities.
After the end of the war, Zofia and Tadeusz Romer did not return to Poland. They resettled in Montreal.
Zofia and Tadeusz Romer with their daughters Gabriela, Elżbieta, and Teresa (left to right) on arrival in Tokyo, 1937. Source: Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe, Warschau, 1-D-818
Farewell ceremony for Tadeusz and Zofia Romer before their departure for Japan, Warsaw, 1937. Source: Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe, Warschau, 1-D-817
