Acclaimed biographer Clare Mulley’s latest book, Agent Zo: the Untold Story of Fearless WW2 Resistance Fighter Elżbieta Zawacka, is published on 16 May, 2024. Clare talks to novelist Carolyn Kirby about the long and remarkable life of Elżbieta Zawacka, or Agent Zo, Polish freedom fighter and one of most successful female spies of the Second World War.
CK: Congratulations on Agent Zo, it’s a fascinating, gripping read. Zo was the only female Polish resistance agent to reach London as a courier and the only female member of Poland’s fabled ‘Silent Unseen’ paratroopers. Yet despite having researched Poland’s wartime resistance movement for my own book, I’d never heard of her. How did you first come across Zo’s story?
CM: After my book about Krystyna Skarbek, The Spy who Loved, came out, I was invited to the Polish embassy and completely bowled over to be given a medal for services to Polish culture. At the ceremony I noticed an elderly lady who no-one else was talking to. I suspected she might have an interesting story to tell and, sure enough, she was Hanna Czarnocka, who had been a teenage combatant during the Warsaw Rising.
Hanna asked me, “why didn’t you write about the real Polish hero, Zo?” I hadn’t heard the name ‘Zo’ until then, but I thought, if someone as incredible as Hanna rates this person so highly, I must find out more about her.
CK: The book is a compulsive read, full of powerfully described details. You feel as if you’re right there with Zo, parachuting into the night or evading arrest by the Gestapo. How did you research her life deeply enough to discover these amazing details?
CM: My research journey through Poland was an absolute adventure. As soon as I flew into Warsaw, I was taken by my interpreter straight to the field where Zo had landed when she parachuted in from RAF Tempsford on 10 September, 1943. The light was just coming up, the ground was covered in dew, and I imagined Zo there, pulling in her parachute through the wet grass. Suddenly Zo and what she did was completely real. It was one of those moments when history comes to life.
Afterwards I visited archives including the astonishing Elżbieta Zawacka Foundation in Toruń, which houses the information she collected about Polish resistance fighters and even her armchair with her woollen shawl draped over the back. I also interviewed people who knew Zo and I was lucky enough to meet Andrzej Drzycimski who was Lech Wałęsa’s press secretary. He passed me a bundle of old cassette tapes on which he’d recorded interviews with the woman herself in the 1980’s. It was astonishing to hear Zo’s voice telling her own stories and her hand pounding the table!
CK: Zo died just a couple of months short of her 100th birthday and her life not only spans Poland’s turbulent 20th century, it seems to encapsulate the country’s struggles.
She grew up speaking only German when the historically Polish town she lived in before the First World War was officially part of Germany, then lived through the exuberance of the inter-war Polish Republic, before wartime struggle and post-war repression. How you think the events in her country shaped Zo’s character?
CM: I’m really pleased that as you read the book you saw this embodiment of Poland’s experience in Zo’s life. And, of course, she lived long enough to spend her last years in the free democratic country that Poland is today, which she had fought for.
Her character was definitely shaped by her environment. In childhood she was officially German and, as you say, she was forced to speak German. Even her first name was a Germanized version of the Polish ‘Elżbieta’. But she was raised to know that — inside — she was Polish.
After independence, she was teased by her schoolmates for not being able to speak Polish. But she quickly learned to speak the language and to fight her corner! All of which became very useful when war came and she could switch seamlessly between presenting herself as Polish or German. Everything she experienced made her the tough, patriotic fighter she became.
CK: How would you sum up Zo’s achievements during wartime? Was her work in keeping the courier routes open as important as the secrets she carried along them?
CM: We know she transported vital information to the Allies and also resources, like cash, from the Allies to the Polish resistance. We don’t know exactly what secrets she ferried in the early part of the war, but a report commissioned by Churchill in May 1945 said that almost half of Britain’s European wartime intelligence had come from Polish sources.
And yes, of course, her heroic journeys through Nazi occupied Europe were vital to maintaining that channel between Poland and the Allies. She travelled inside water tenders behind steam train engines, lying on wooden planks wedged above the water and squashed “like herrings” alongside other resistance stowaways. She was shot at while crossing the snowbound Pyrenees on foot in a journey her guide warned would require “superior mountain-climbing skills”. She had crossed wartime borders more than 100 times before her network was betrayed.
CK: Zo seems a very different character to Krystyna Skarbek, the other Polish secret agent you have written about, in The Spy who Loved. How do their personalities and their achievements compare?
CM: They were very different characters, most obviously in that Krystyna had many love affairs while Zo seems to have had little romantic time for men. And they were also different in that Krystyna worked for the British, whereas Zo was in the Polish resistance – although she was sent to Britain during the war.
But both women were brilliant undercover operators and totally committed to fighting for their country. Both wanted to serve at the front, and both instinctively moved towards danger not away from it. The two women never met, but during one Polish research trip I was delighted to find an amazing connection between them.
After visiting Zo’s parachute landing site, I stopped with my interpreter at the nearby convent of Szymanów. Here, Zo had sheltered undercover during the war by wearing the dark blue uniform of a postulant nun. After peering through the gates, we were invited in and introduced ourselves.
Incredibly, the nuns said they knew my name very well as the biographer of Krystyna Skarbek who had attended the convent’s boarding school. I was amazed because although I knew Krystyna had been at convent school, I’d never pinned down which one. It was a wonderful moment to make this connection between the two women.
CK: I know from researching the life of the Polish military pilot Janina Lewandowska that women in Poland were historically more integrated into military roles than in the UK. But Zo was instrumental in establishing a clear legal status for women in Polish forces. Is this her most important legacy?
CM: Zo always considered herself to be a soldier, and perhaps because of that she wasn’t afraid of giving people orders! It’s true that due to Poland’s long history of occupation and resistance, women have historically had an active military role. In the wars with the Soviet Union in 1920, women not only acted as auxiliaries but also put on trousers and picked up guns to fight.
Zo’s work in legalising women’s position as soldiers in the Polish resistance Home Army probably saved thousands of women’s lives, but this was only part of her legacy. She was fighting for women’s rights, but also for freedom for her country – she realised that these aims went hand-in-hand.
And Zo’s legacy also lies in her incredible archive of testimonies from the Polish resistance without which the wartime contribution of many women would be unknown.
CK: You mention in a footnote that you were writing the book as Russia invaded Ukraine. What impact did this event have on how you saw Zo’s story?
CM: When we think about resistance, we tend to think about France rather than Poland, yet the history on the Eastern Front seems so resonant. This struck home during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine which took place as I was writing the chapter about Zo serving in Lwów – now the Ukrainian city of Lviv. Taking a coffee break from writing up an episode about Zo and other women making petrol bombs in a Lwów sports hall, I went to put the kettle on.
And on the radio news women in Lviv were filling petrol bombs in the sports hall of a girls’ school. They talked about hugging each other as the fumes became overwhelming, just as the women in 1939 had. I hope people reading this book will not only enjoy Zo’s compelling life story but also be reminded of the resistance in eastern Europe, and the extent and value of women’s military service.
CK: Thank you so much, Clare, for taking the time to tell us about your excellent new book.
Agent Zo: the Untold Story of Fearless WW2 Resistance Fighter Elżbieta Zawacka by Clare Mulley is published on 16 May, 2024.
Clare is an award-winning author and historian focused on female experience during the Second World War. Her previous books include The Women who Flew for Hitler, The Spy who Loved and The Woman who Saved the Children.
She is a regular contributor to TV (including the BBC’s Rise of the Nazis and Channel 5’s Secret History of WW2), radio (Radio 4’s History’s Secret Heroes) and many podcasts. She is a recipient of the Polish cultural honour, the Bene Merito, and the Daily Mail Biographer’s Club Prize.
Carolyn has also interviewed Clare about Krystyna Skarbek and the successful campaign to obtain a Blue Plaque to commemorate Krystyna’s work.
We’ve also spoken to Clare (she’s got many, many interesting topics to discuss) about Eglantyne Jebb (the ‘woman who saved the children’) and the two female German pilots whose story she tells in The Women who Flew for Hitler.
Carolyn Kirby is a novelist and HWA member. Her debut novel, The Conviction of Cora Burns, was longlisted for the HWA Debut Crown Award in 2019. Her follow up novel, When We Fall, a thriller and dark love story set between Britain and Poland during the Second World War, has just been released in Poland.
She’s written for Historia about the background to her second novel in Fifty years of fake news; the cover-up of the Katyn Massacre.
You may be interested in these other features about Poland during World War II:
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising by Elisabeth Gifford
How I discovered my war hero uncle’s secret by Douglas Jackson
And Making room for the master race: the true scope of Himmler’s Lebensborn programme by Catherine Hokin also refers to wartime Poland.
Lucy Ward‘s research for her book was also affected by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as she tells in Invasion, inoculation and publication: when your book becomes unexpectedly topical.
Images (all supplied by Clare Mulley unless stated otherwise):
- Photo of Zo from her student identity papers: © Elżbieta Zawacka Foundation, Toruń
- Clare with Hanna Czarnocka when they first met at the Polish Embassy
- Zo in uniform (centre) in the pre-war PWK Women’s Military Auxiliary: © Elżbieta Zawacka Foundation, Toruń
- Zo’s photo for false papers during the war (she was constantly changing her appearance): © Elżbieta Zawacka Foundation, Toruń
- Archivist Sister Janina at the Szymanów convent
- Zo on 30 December, 1983: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej via Wikimedia (public domain)
