WORLD WAR II: KRYSTYNA SKARBEK

Dominique King

May 1,1908 Born in Warsaw to

Count Jerzy Skarbek, a Catholic, and Stefania

née Goldfeder, the daughter of a wealthy assimilated Jewish

family.

Like my father, I enjoyed riding ponies. I also enjoyed climbing

trees and learning how to shoot guns.

After World War One, a Great Depression

occurred in Europe. As a result, Goldfeder

bank collapsed and with it the Skarbek family’s

grand lifestyle.

June 26,1930Father passed away due

to tuberculosis.

July 5, 1930 There was barely enough money to

support my widowed Mother. Not wishing to be a burden to her, I took a job at

a Fiat car dealership. But, I soon became ill due to the fumes and had to

leave the job.

To improve my health, the family doctor advised me to lead as much of an open-air life as I could. I began

spending a great deal of time hiking and skiing the Tatra

Mountains of southern Poland.

November 2, 1938

Jerzy Giżycki and I married at the Evangelical Reformed

Church in Warsaw. Soon after, he accepted a diplomatic posting to

Ethiopia, where he served as Poland’s consul general. We left Europe for colonial

living in Africa.

September 1, 1939When my husband and I heard

Germany began to invade Poland, we sailed for London, England, where I sought to offer my services in the

struggle against the common enemy.

My acquaintance, a journalist,

Frederick Augustus Voigt introduced me to the Secret Intelligence

Service (SIS).

December 21, 1939I departed for Budapest after my plan had been approved by The British

Special Operations Executive. My plan was to go to Budapest, Hungary, print propaganda leaflets, and ski into Poland across the Tatra mountain range. I would then undertake

intelligence missions and assist Polish resistance fighters in escaping from

the country.

Arriving in Warsaw, I located my mother, who was of Jewish blood. I

pleaded with her mother to leave Nazi-occupied Poland. She refused and died at the hands of the occupying Germans

in Warsaw's Pawiak prison.

In Budapest, I met the Polish war hero Andrzej Kowerski. I knew him as

a child. We worked together collecting intelligence. As our

work for the SOE expanded, I was given the name Christine Granville, and he

became Andrew Kennedy. We fell in love. And

though my marriage with Gizycki ended, Kowerski and I never married.

I helped organize a system of Polish couriers who brought intelligence reports from

Warsaw to Budapest. Andrzej Kowerski's cousin Ludwik Popiel and I managed to smuggle out the unique Polish anti-tank

rifle, model 35, with the stock and barrel sawed off for easier

transport.

J anuary 1941Kowerski and I were arrested by the Gestapo. I won our

release, feigning symptoms of pulmonary tuberculosis by biting my tongue until it bled. We then made our way through hundreds of miles of Nazi-occupied territory to SIS headquarters in Cairo,

Egypt.

June 22, 1941

My prediction that Germany would invade the Soviet Union came true. I was once again in the SOE's good graces.

British prime minister, Winston Churchill, dubbed

me his favorite spy.

22 June 1941As my intelligence had

obtained, Germany had started Operation Barbarossa, an

invasion of the Soviet Union. This document is a German diary found detailing the beginning

of the operation.

1944Fluent in French, I was

offered to SOE's teams in France. I began Parachute training in Cairo, Egypt

and would use this training for numerous

jumps into Nazi-occupied France.

July 6, 1944 As "Pauline Armand", I parachuted into southeastern France on and

became part of the "Jockey" network directed by a Belgian-British lapsed

pacifist, Francis Cammaerts. I assisted Cammaerts by linking Italian partisans and French Maquis for joint operations against the Germans in the Alps and by inducing non-Germans,

especially conscripted Poles, in the German occupation forces to defect to

the Allies.

August 13, 1944At Digne, comrades of mine—Cammaerts, Xan Fielding and a French officer, Christian Sorensen—were arrested at a roadblock by the Gestapo. Learning that they were to be

executed, I managed to meet with Capt. Albert Schenck, an Alsatian who acted as liaison officer between the local

French prefecture and the Gestapo. I introduced myself as a niece of British General Bernard Montgomery and threatened

Schenck with terrible retribution if harm came to the prisoners. They were released.

After the war, Xan Fielding—the man I saved from the

gestapo—wrote this book and dedicated it to me.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krystyna_Skarbek

• http://nigelperrin.com/christinegranville.htm#.U0V4C8tOXcs

• http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/07/07/world-war-two-s-most-glamorous-spy-christine-granville.html

• Google.com