It means "whore". Unless I'm not remembering right.
You're remembering right. I must say, as a Polish person, I was rather suprised to scroll down the forums and just suddenly see this word
I thought I was hallucinating for a while.
Also, "kurwa" means "whore", but it's also the most popular swear word in Polish, probably (out of those more vulgar). It's kind of like "fuck" in English. Some less civilised people use it kind of like a comma in their sentences
It's a very vulgar word, though, so I am definitely not suprised that the ladies your mum asked were embarassed.
Sorry for this random linguistics post in an old thread, but can you even imagine how suprised I was?