Krystyna Skarbek
Countess Krystyna Skarbek , aka Christine Granville OBE (* 1. May 1908 in Trzepnica at Gorzkowice ; † 15. June 1952 in London ) was a Polish agent of British intelligence Special Forces Special Operations Executive (SOE) and member of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS ).
Life
Prewar years
Krystyna Skarbek - daughter of the Catholic Polish count Jerzy Skarbek and his wife Stefania Skarbek, née gold nib, a Jewish banker's daughter - spent riding, mountain climbing and participating in a beauty contest a carefree youth. In 1930 - after the father's death - the family moved to Warsaw . There Krystyna Skarbek married the industrialist Gustav Gettlich in 1933. The marriage lasted half a year. In November 1938 she married the Polish writer and diplomat Jerzy Giżycki. The newly weds went to Kenya in diplomatic services . When the war broke out , both were in Addis Ababa . The couple left Africa for France. From there Krystyna Giżycka traveled solo to England .
Agent in the war
Krystyna Skarbek-Giżycka volunteered for the SOE and was sent to Hungary as Christine Granville, born in 1915 . In Budapest she was considered a journalist and worked with the SOE agent and officer of the Polish Land Forces Andrzej Kowerski (1912–1988) (code name Andrew Kennedy). From Budapest Krystyna Skarbek traveled three times to Poland via Slovakia as a Tatra courier and arranged contacts between the British SIS and Stefan Witkowski's (1903–1942) underground organization Musketeers (Polish: Muszkieterzy, Muszkieterowie, “Mu”, “Nurki”, “Regimenty Mu "," Żupany "). The musketeers then radioed from Podkowa Leśna to England. Together with Andrzej Kowerski, Krystyna Skarbek prepared the escape of those Poles from Hungarian camps who wanted to fight as soldiers against the German Reich from England . The two agents were among the informants who provided the British with information on the presumably intended attack date by the Wehrmacht on the Soviet Union .
In 1940 Krystyna Skarbek was able to visit her mother in Warsaw. The daughter tried to persuade the mother to flee Poland - in vain. Stefania Skarbek was arrested by the Germans on January 31, 1942 and later murdered.
Krystyna Skarbek and Andrzej Kowerski then served in England under Francis Cammaerts (1916-2006) as SOE agents and were ordered to Cairo when the Wehrmacht attacked the Balkans . Since Krystyna Skarbek spoke fluent French and it was quite easy to smuggle British agents from Egypt into France, she assisted Sir Arthur Douglas Dodds-Parker (1909-2006) among others at the Col de Larche with the formation as Pauline Armand in France in the summer of 1944 the Maquisards together with the Resistance against the Gestapo . The English did not agree to their wish to participate in the Warsaw Uprising . In April 1945 Krystyna Skarbek was demobilized in Cairo and received £ 100 as severance pay (an average annual salary at that time was £ 3,000).
Post-war years
On August 1, 1946, Krystyna Skarbek divorced Jerzy Giżycki at the Polish Consulate in Berlin. In the last years of her life she worked in London as a saleswoman and operator. As a stewardess on a passenger ship on an English South Africa line, she met her future killer, the steward Dennis George Muldowney. This then stabbed her in the London Hotel Shelbourne in Earls Court after she had rejected his advances. He was sentenced to death and hanged in Pentonville Prison on September 30, 1952 .
Krystyna Skarbek was buried in the Roman Catholic Cemetery of St. Mary in Kensal Green in north-west London.
Biographies
- Madeleine Masson: Christine, a search for Christine Granville, GM, OBE, Croix de Guerre . Hamilton, London 1975 (English)
- Jan Larecki: Krystyna Skarbek. Agentka o wielu twarzach (Krystyna Skarbek. Agent with many faces). Książka i Wiedza (Book and Knowledge), 2008 (Polish)
- Clare Mulley: The Spy Who Loved: the Secrets and Lives of Christine Granville, Britain's First Special Agent of World War II . The secrets and life of Christine Granville, Britain's first special agent in World War II, St. Martin's, New York 2012 (English)
- Ronald Nowicki: The Elusive Madame G. A life of Christine Granville (Die elusive Madame G), 2013 (English)
Honors
- Great Britain
- Order of the British Empire , Officer (OBE)
- George Medal
- 1939-1945 star
- Africa Star
- Italy Star
- France and Germany Star
- Was medal 1939-1945
- France
- Croix de Guerre 1939-1945
Web links
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Skarbek, Krystyna |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Skarbek-Giżycka, Maria Krystyna (full name); Granville, Christine (pseudonym); Armand, Pauline (pseudonym) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Polish-British agent |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 1, 1908 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Trzepnica near Gorzkowice |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 15, 1952 |
| Place of death | London |