Biography
Stella Petrosky was a Pennsylvania anthracite Unemployment Council leader and mother of eight American-born children, arrested at an eviction protest at Wilkes-Barre and put through deportation proceedings to Poland, in the deportation drive of 1935 against foreign-born labor militants and anti-fascists.
Janet Ginn’s August 1935 Labor Defender account names her husband Tom, a miner, and describes neighborhood organizing that raised the family’s weekly relief from $4 to $7 and then $10. It reports that police clubbed and arrested her while she tried to protect another worker at an eviction protest; a neighborhood delegation secured her release. The next morning officials questioned her citizenship. Ginn describes pending deportation proceedings, not an executed deportation, and identifies relief administrator Stephanie McCarthy as a public supporter. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1935/v11n08-aug-1935-orig-LD.pdf#page=9 and #page=15.
Page 2 names Stella Petrosky as the Wilkes-Barre organizer held for deportation after relief demonstrations and as the mother of eight American-born children. Her oldest daughter, Genevieve, seventeen, visited John Ujich June 27 carrying her message. This corroborates the identity printed Stella Petrovsky in the April 29 issue and Stella Petrowski in the May 25 convention report; it does not establish deportation or a new measured term. The daughter is not a new detainee. The spelling-variant duplicate created during this batch is documented in the audit for proposed consolidation; no unapproved production deletion is performed. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1935/v12-n156-NAT-jul-01-1935-DW-Q.pdf
Page 3’s April 28 Wilkes-Barre dispatch identifies Stella Petrovsky as a Luzerne County Unemployment Councils executive-committee activist held by immigration authorities on $1,000 bail for deportation. Polish-born, in the United States since age fourteen and mother of eight, she had organized against evictions and supported a school strike protesting two unnamed students’ jail sentences. The newspaper links her arrest to efforts to weaken support for the Glen Alden miners. The students are not invented as named profiles. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1935/v12-n102-NAT-apr-29-1935-DW-Q.pdf
Page 4 prints Stella Petrowski of Wilkes-Barre as presiding at the Polish Workers’ Convention session greeting John Mooney, May 11–13. It identifies her as the mother of eight American children facing deportation because of relief and unemployment-insurance organizing. This adds a spelling variant and public-defense context, without establishing termination of immigration proceedings. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1935/v12-n125-NAT-may-25-1935-DW-Q.pdf
The Wilkes-Barre report on the June 9 immigrant-defense conference identifies her as an activist and mother of eight facing deportation to Poland. It says her hearing was scheduled for June 24 and plans were made to take her and her family to Washington to protest to immigration authorities and the Labor Secretary; delegates contributed to that effort. Those are prospective hearing and delegation plans, not proof of completed deportation or a new arrest. The article’s claim that she was not a Polish citizen is preserved as its allegation, alongside earlier reports identifying Polish birth. Source: https://www.spauda2.org/laisve/archive/1935/1935-06-14-LAISVE.pdf#page=7
Reported cancellation of the deportation warrant
The American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born brochure, catalogued as 1937, page 5, identifies Petrosky as the mother of eight American-born children and reports that the Labor Department cancelled her deportation warrant after nationwide protest, despite an immigration inspector recommending deportation to Poland. This supplies the reported administrative outcome, but gives neither a cancellation day nor a new physical-release date. It does not replace the separately documented April 25–27, 1935 custody interval.
Daily Worker, July 1, 1935; relevant page stated in the accompanying profile note.
Contemporary original newspaper source; individual page evidence retained in review audit 520. Exact individual custody dates and duration are not inferred from relative dates or collective claims.
Daily Worker, May 25, 1935; relevant page stated in the accompanying profile note.
The review of Charles Recht’s The Right of Asylum names Sallitto and Ferrero as California residents held for deportation to Italy over renting restaurant office space to anarchists. It separately lists Eric Becker, Carl Ohm, Otto Richter, Stella Petrosky and Walter Baer among radical or labor activists held for deportation. These are current detention and threatened removal references, not proof of actual deportation, a new admission or individually measured custody.
