The significant role of Polish women in the anti-Nazi resistance. There were three main choices for Polish women who wished to actively resist the Germans after the invasion of Poland in September 1939: join the Communist Resistance, serve with the Home Army, or become a member of the international resistance. In addition to these options, Jewish women took part in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943 and fought alongside Jewish partisans in the forests of Poland.
Helena Wolff (Dr. Anka), and many other women were active in the Communist Resistance. When World War II broke out, she worked at the Holy Spirit Hospital in Warsaw. During the siege of Warsaw, she risked her own life to remove patients from the burning hospital building. In April 1940 she qualified as a physician. While working at the Marie Curie Radiological Institute in the spring of 1942, she joined the Polish Workers’ Party and the People’s Guard, and began forming underground People’s Guard cells in Warsaw’s hospitals. In addition to transporting weapons and Party papers, she also trained nurses for the partisans. In July 1943 she became chief of the People’s Guard medical department. When the Germans discovered a People’s Guard cell at the Radiological Institute, the party sent Dr. Wolff to a partisan unit in Kielce Province. Early in 1944 she was appointed medical chief of the third district (Kielce) by the headquarters of the People’s Army (which succeeded People’s Guard). In addition to discharging physician’s duties, she fought alongside partisans. In May 1944 she participated in the rescue of fifty-six Soviet soldiers from a POW camp. Subsequently commissioned, in July 1944 Lieutenant Wolff was appointed medical officer of the People’s Army’s 1st Brigade. She was actively involved in sabotage missions. On September 30, 1944, she was granted the rank of captain and the Grunwald Cross. Wounded in October, she was captured by the enemy. It is unclear how she died on October 31, 1944. She was promoted posthumously to the rank of major.
Eileen Garlinska (1912-1990), born Eileen Frances Short, was the daughter of a Liverpool sea captain. She came to Poland on a holiday in 1935 and decided to stay. Soon after the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, she married a Polish student. She then went to work as a translator at a clandestine Warsaw office of the Polish government in exile. When her husband became a senior intelligence officer with the underground Home Army, she was given false papers and a new name (Helena). While working as an English teacher, she became a courier. The only British woman to take part in the Warsaw uprising of 1944, she also worked as a nurse. She survived her various adventures and after the war emigrated with her family to the United Kingdom.
The Home Army was split into groups specializing in intelligence and sabotage, weapons buying and manufacturing, and training. A women’s sabotage school was founded in 1942, with women becoming members of the Grey Ranks, commando units specializing in diversionary actions and sabotage, including the theft of weapons manuals, which were translated and combined with instructions on how to build simplified models.
According to General Tadeusz Bor-Komorowski, leader of the Home Army, on the eve of the Warsaw uprising in August 1944, women constituted about one-seventh of the group’s total 40,000 membership. The revolt, which began on August 1 and lasted two months, resulted in the devastation of the city, the deaths of some 250,000 people (Saywell 1985, 103, 129), and temporary exile for the survivors.
Two all-female units were created during the uprising: a unit of demolition experts and a special detachment intended for duty in the city sewer system. Among Home Army women, many were Girl Guides who reconnoitered escape and supply routes through the sewers of Warsaw, smuggled weapons, and were members of assassination squads. Others carried messages, delivered food, or took part in smuggling small groups of people out of Warsaw and into the forests for their protection. In addition, an unknown number of women nonmembers risked their lives in helping the resisters, offering them food, hiding them in cellars, and keeping quiet. One Home Army girl courier who went to the Warsaw Ghetto regularly was eventually killed. By far the largest number of Home Army women were liaison couriers and medics.
Polish Resistance
"I was taking a message to headquarters. I had the papers hidden in my sleeve and I walked down the street pretending to be an elegant young lady out for a stroll. Then I passed by some SS men. I thought, You bloody bastards. You think you are so strong and I am so weak but my work will eventually defeat you. That was my satisfaction.’ "
—Black Barbara (Irena Kwiatkowska-Komorowska),
Courier, Home Army, Warsaw. Quoted in Shelley Saywell. 1985.
“Uprising: Poland, 1939–1945.” Pages 102–103 in Women in War.
Markham, ON: Penguin Books Canada.
Women did participate in armed combat during the uprising. Men, however, tended to not approve of women bearing arms. Because of the shortage of guns, women were the last to receive them. Despite the onerous tasks being assigned to women, many male veterans do not acknowledge females in the Home Army as soldiers because they did not always bear arms. Ida Do-brzanska-Kasprzak, an officer with the Home Army, later complained,
I think it is about time that people took notice. It should be said, once and for all, that women fought, too. Men believe if you don’t shoot or carry a gun you are not a soldier. But we did the most tedious and most dangerous jobs. Women were injured and killed in action. Men just don’t want to admit that we fought too.
Krystyna Skarbek, born in 1915, was the multilingual daughter of a Polish count. Active in several sports, she married Jerzy Giuycki, a mountain climber and author, in 1938, and the outbreak of World War II found them in Africa. They moved to Great Britain, where Krystyna met George Taylor of the Special Operations Executive (SOE). As an alleged correspondent for a London newspaper, she left for Budapest, Hungary—then a German ally—on December 21, 1939. Subsequently she traveled to Poland to make contact with a secret group of Polish officers working for British intelligence and to visit her Jewish mother, whom she was unable to save. After returning to Hungary, she transmitted clandestine information obtained in Poland to England. When the situation in Hungary became difficult, the SOE sent Krystyna to France. She also had a lengthy assignment in Algeria. Later, known as "Pauline Armand," she was airdropped into southern France on July 7, 1944. Disguised as an untidy peasant woman fluent in Italian, she was sent repeatedly to Italy, where she made contact with Italian partisans and proved successful in recruiting Italian soldiers.
She saved an associate named Roger, who had been arrested by the Gestapo, by daring to reveal that she worked for the SOE and offering the Germans 2 million franks for his freedom, which the SOE agreed to pay. After the war, while working as a waitress in a Polish cafe in Great Britain, she was stabbed to death by a jealous Irishman, who had become obsessed with her on June 15, 1952. Her funeral was attended by two generals: Stanislaw Kopanski, former chief of staff of the Polish Armed Forces, and Colin Gubbins, director of the British Special Operations Executive. Nicknamed by friends "The Queen of the European Underground," Krystyna Skarbek-Gizycka was awarded both the Order of the British Empire and the French Croix de Guerre.
