Walentynowicz was born in 1929 in village Sinne near Rivne (which is now Ukraine) as Anna Lubczyk, in a family of Ukrainian Shtundists. She was orphaned during the Second World War at the age of ten and began to work as a maid. Later, after the war, she migrated into Poland. Walentynowicz began working in the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk, Poland in 1950, first as a welder, later as a crane operator. Recognized as a "Hero of Socialist Labor" or Stakhanovite for her hard work, Walentynowicz became disillusioned with the communist system in Poland, especially after the bloody events in December 1970 on the Baltic Coast. While she was an activist and a member of a socialist youth organization, she was never formally a member of the communist party. Anna was a devout Catholic, who believed in social justice and standing up against oppression, and who became deeply moved in her later years by the teachings of Pope John Paul II, with whom she developed a personal relationship. One of the last letters which John Paul II wrote was to Anna Walentynowicz wishing her speedy recovery from a back injury.