Bronisława Wajs, later known by her Romani name Papusza, was born on 17 August 1908 into a nomadic Polish Roma family.
Bronisława Wajs, who would become known throughout Poland and internationally by her Romani name Papusza (meaning "doll"), was born on 17 August 1908 into a family of nomadic Kalderash-Polska Roma. Her exact birthplace is disputed among sources — most commonly cited as Sitaniec near Zamość, though some secondary accounts list Lublin — reflecting the itinerant lifestyle of her family and the general difficulty of documenting Roma births in early twentieth-century Poland.
She grew up within a traveling Roma community, a life governed by strict traditional customs, seasonal migration, and oral culture. Unlike most girls in her community, Papusza developed an intense hunger for literacy, reportedly trading food, poultry, and other goods to local Polish villagers in exchange for reading lessons — an act considered highly unusual and even transgressive within her community's norms.
This early, self-driven pursuit of education set the stage for what would become a groundbreaking literary career. Her birth, though undated in terms of grand public event, marks the origin point of a woman who would eventually become the first Romani poet in Poland to publish under her own name, and whose life would come to symbolize both the richness and the tragic marginalization of Roma culture in twentieth-century Europe.