It always helps to double-check and triple-check the spelling of a Polish surname (or better yet, just copy-paste it straight from the person’s own writing). But cultural sensitivity, and the internet, hadn’t been invented yet when a young Buffalo barmaid single-handedly confronted a riotous stampede of gangland vandals on New Year’s Eve 1916.
The police report contained two surname spellings: Azkrzewski and Zakrzewski, spanning the entire alphabet, literally, from A to Z. The Buffalo News initially reported her name as Anna Zakrewski on January 3rd, then Anna Zarkreyski on January 4th, and Anna Zahrewski on January 5th. The last one was an obvious misreading of some muckraker’s chicken-scratch. Then on February 15th, journalists took another shot at the spelling: Anna Zakerewska (although the headline misspelled that misspelling: Lakerewska). Maybe by that point the reporters were just shaking a Scrabble bag to see what tiles might roll out. They tried a W and a Y, but didn’t think to add an extra Z in the middle.
If the constellation of letters signifying Anna Zakrzewski looks vaguely familiar, it should be specified that this was not the famous Anna Zakrzewska who heroically died in combat during the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, and also not the child Anna Zakrzewski whose horrific 1994 Florida murder resulted in her father’s execution.
Anna Zakrzewski is a fairly common name…