Claim:   A badly-burned Polish girl will receive 3 cents towards her medical care for every e-mail forwarded.

Status:   Multiple:

• A little Polish girl was badly burned in a fire, and her parents need money to pay for her medical care and reconstructive surgery:   True.
• The girl's parents will receive 3 cents towards her medical care each time an e-mail message about her is forwarded:   False.

Example:   [Collected on the Internet, 2005]

Dear All, Alexandra came out of a rigging fire alive, but now has to fight for her life and a normal future. She is 14 months old and she has burnt skin all over her body, damage facial bones (as a result of very high temperature). She does not have half of her face. She is in hospital in Cracow - Poland and one of the best specialist is looking after her. However she still has to go through many surgeries and then long rehab. Unfortunately her parents do not have any more money. Therefore we are asking for your help. For each forwarded email her parents will get 3 cents. Please help them and forward that email to as many people as you can.

Origins:   Information regarding Olenka Kuczma, the girl pictured above, is difficult to come by as nearly all media coverage of the case has occurred in her home country of Poland, and thus there is as yet a dearth of English-language news articles about her experience.

We started seeing the e-mail appeal about little Ola show up in our inbox in August 2005, and since then some helpful netizens fluent in both Polish and English have helped provide us with background information about her gleaned from the Polish media. She was caught in a house fire in June 2005 and suffered severe burns as depicted in the photograph accompanying the text, including head and facial burns that resulted in the loss of her right ear. (The mention of a "rigging fire" in the original message is likely a mistranscription of the phrase "raging fire.")

Ola is currently under the care of doctors at University Children's Hospital in Krakow; reports differ as to whether she suffered any permanent brain damage, and she will of course need a good many skin grafts and reconstructive surgeries which her parents (who hope to have her treated in the USA or Switzerland) are ill able to afford (especially since they lost nearly everything they owned in the fire).

Unfortunately, although Ola's plight has been publicized on Polish television, the e-mail message circulating in English provides no legitimate means for caring readers to help contribute to Ola's medical care beyond claiming that her parents will receive 3 cents for each person the message is forwarded to — a cruel hoax that has been attached to a number of Internet-circulated sick and injured child pleas for several years now. (The Polish TV site linked above does include Ola's bank account information for those who wish to donate funds, however.)

Last updated:   20 March 2008

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