Anna Styś was born Anna Rudnik in the village of Zapceń, Gmina Lipnica, Pomeranian Voivodeship, Poland (then German Empire), to parents Piotr Rudnik (1879-1963) and Elżbieta Orzłowski (1887-1971). She had five sisters and four brothers. She studied in Kościerzyna, where she first graduated from the School of Economics in 1925, and then from the School of Industry and Commerce in 1927.

In 1933, she married Józef Styś, a native of Sambir in the present-day Lviv Oblast, Ukraine. Her husband was a forester, and later a military training instructor. He was imprisoned by the Gestapo in Chojnice at the beginning of the Second World War. Thanks to Anna’s efforts, he was released from prison together with a friend. He had to flee to the General Government with forged documents and took part in the resistance movement. He died in 1941 during the war in Jasło in the present-day Subcarpathian Voivodeship.

During the occupation, she was hiding Stefania Jung – Mochnacka, a fugitive who escaped from the Moabit’s prison in Berlin. She also helped the partisans of the Pomeranian Griffin secret military organization by supplying them with food from her own household. After the war, she settled in Chojnice, first as an inspector in the professional organization of farmers, later in the military unit’s casino, and finally as an office worker.

After her retirement in the 1970s, she helped to raise her grandson, Eugeniusz. Some of her hobbies included reading, she especially liked historical and biblical novels. She cultivated an allotment garden where she worked until the age of 96.

Her brother-in-law (husband’s brother) was the Jesuit Father, Stanisław Styś, Doctor of Philosophy and theology, professor at the Catholic University of Lublin, a well-known Polish biblical scholar and researcher of the Old Testament.

Anna Styś died in Chojnice, Pomeranian Voivodeship, Poland at 3 AM of 1 July 2020 at the age of 111 years, 343 days.