World War II: Krystyna Skarbek

1. World War II: KrystynaSkarbek Dominique King

2. May 1,1908 Born in Warsaw to Count Jerzy Skarbek, a Catholic, and Stefania née Goldfeder, the daughter of a wealthy assimilated Jewish family.

3. Like my father, I enjoyed riding ponies. I also enjoyed climbing trees and learning how to shoot guns.

4. After World War One, a Great Depression occurred in Europe. As a result, Goldfederbank collapsed and with it the Skarbek family’s grand lifestyle.

5. June 26,1930 Father passed away due to tuberculosis.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. November 2, 1938 Jerzy Giżyckiand 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.

9. September 1, 1939 When 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.

10. My acquaintance, a journalist, Frederick Augustus Voigt introduced me to the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS).

11. December 21, 1939 I 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.

12. 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.

13. 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 Gizyckiended, Kowerski and I never married.

14. I helped organize a system of Polish couriers who brought intelligence reports from Warsaw to Budapest. Andrzej Kowerski's cousin LudwikPopieland I managed to smuggle out the unique Polish anti-tank rifle, model 35, with the stock and barrel sawed off for easier transport.

15. January 1941 Kowerski 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.

16. 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.

17. 22 June 1941 As 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.

18. 1944 Fluent 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.

19. 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.

20. August 13, 1944 At 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.

21. After the war, Xan Fielding— the man I saved from the gestapo—wrote this book and dedicated it to me.

22. 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