1. Krystyna Skarbek became celebrated for her daring exploits in intelligence and irregular-warfare missions in Nazi-occupied Poland and France.
74 Facts About Krystyna Skarbek
1. 2.
Krystyna Skarbek became a British agent months before the SOE was founded in July 1940.
3.
Krystyna Skarbek was the first female agent of the British to serve in the field and the longest-serving of all Britain's wartime women agents.
4.
Krystyna Skarbek did so by meeting with the Gestapo commander in Digne-les-Bains, France, telling him she was a British agent, and persuading him with threats, lies, and a two million franc bribe to release the SOE agents.
5.
Krystyna Skarbek is often characterised in terms such as Britain's "most glamorous spy" or "Churchill's favourite spy".
6.
Krystyna Skarbek was stabbed to death in 1952 in London by an obsessed and spurned suitor who was hanged.
7.
Krystyna Skarbek was born in 1908 in Warsaw, the second child of Count Jerzy Skarbek, a Roman Catholic, and Stefania, the daughter of a wealthy assimilated Jewish family.
8.
Krystyna Skarbek was distantly related to the Hungarian regent, Admiral Miklos Horthy, as a cousin from the Lwow side of the family had married a relative of Horthy.
9.
Krystyna Skarbek took after her father and his liking for riding horses, which she sat astride rather than side-saddle as was usual for women.
10.
Krystyna Skarbek became an expert skier during visits to Zakopane in the Tatra mountains of southern Poland.
11.
Krystyna Skarbek, not wishing to be a burden to her mother, worked at a Fiat car dealership, but soon became ill from automobile fumes and had to give up the job.
12.
Krystyna Skarbek received compensation from her employer's insurance company and took her physicians' advice to lead as much of an open-air life as she could.
13.
Krystyna Skarbek began spending a great deal of time hiking and skiing the Tatra Mountains.
14.
Krystyna Skarbek eventually became an author and travelled the world in search of material for his books and articles.
15.
Krystyna Skarbek knew Africa well and hoped one day to return there.
16.
Krystyna Skarbek was described as a "flaming Polish patriot, expert skier, and great adventuress" and "absolutely fearless".
17.
Krystyna Skarbek's cover story for her presence in Hungary was that she was a journalist.
18.
Stefania Krystyna Skarbek refused; she was determined to stay in Warsaw to continue teaching French to small children.
19.
An incident that probably dates to Krystyna Skarbek's first visit back to Poland in February 1940 illustrates the hazards she faced while working in her occupied homeland.
20.
In Hungary, Krystyna Skarbek encountered Andrzej Kowerski, now a Polish army officer, who later used the British nom de guerre "Andrew Kennedy".
21.
Krystyna Skarbek had first met him as a child and briefly encountered him again before the war at Zakopane.
22.
Krystyna Skarbek helped organise a system of Polish couriers who brought intelligence reports from Warsaw to Budapest.
23.
Krystyna Skarbek is credited with providing intelligence on oil transports to Germany from Romania's Ploiesti oilfields.
24.
Krystyna Skarbek spent 1940 travelling back and forth between Poland and Hungary.
25.
Krystyna Skarbek feigned symptoms of pulmonary tuberculosis by biting her tongue until it bled and a doctor diagnosed her incorrectly with terminal tuberculosis.
26.
Kowerski became "Anthony Kennedy", and Krystyna Skarbek became "Christine Granville", a name she used for the rest of her life.
27.
Krystyna Skarbek shaved seven years off her age; her passport gave her birth date as 1915.
28.
In Istanbul, they met with exiled Poles, and Krystyna Skarbek tried to ensure that the courier routes from Istanbul to Poland remained functional.
29.
Krystyna Skarbek obtained visas from reluctant Vichy officials and they continued their journey.
30.
Kowerski, who was under less suspicion than Krystyna Skarbek, eventually cleared up any misunderstandings with General Kopanski and was able to resume intelligence work.
31.
When Krystyna Skarbek told her husband that she loved Kowerski, Gizycki left for London, eventually emigrating to Canada.
32.
Krystyna Skarbek turned down offers of office work and continued to be sidelined from the kind of dangerous and difficult work she desired.
33.
Krystyna Skarbek's briefing officer in FANY, Gwendolin Lees, was so impressed by Skarbek that she later named a daughter after her.
34.
Krystyna Skarbek proved to be very bad at wireless transmitting and hated firearms training, but she loved parachuting.
35.
Krystyna Skarbek's French was good and she took a course to improve her English.
36.
Krystyna Skarbek moved to Algeria in preparation for a mission to France, but she was not immediately dispatched because SOE believed she was "too flamboyant to work undercover effectively".
37.
Krystyna Skarbek became part of the Jockey network headed by Francis Cammaerts, Belgian-British in nationality and a former pacifist.
38.
Krystyna Skarbek was Cammaerts' courier, replacing Cecily Lefort, who had been captured by the Germans and would be executed.
39.
Krystyna Skarbek was given the task of attempting to subvert the Polish conscripts in the German army who were stationed along the Franco-Italian border.
40.
Krystyna Skarbek arrived in the midst of a large operation headed by British major Desmond Longe of supplying by parachute the local maquis with arms and supplies.
41.
Krystyna Skarbek was out every moonlit night organising a reception committee to collect the canisters dropped by Allied aeroplanes on the plateau.
42.
Krystyna Skarbek carried a rucksack filled with food and hand grenades.
43.
Krystyna Skarbek made contact with two prominent leaders of the French Resistance, Gilbert Galletti and Paul Herault, and greeted the arrival of an "Operation Toplink" team which included her friends John Roper, Paddy O'Regan, and Harvard Gunn.
44.
The Poles in the garrison joined the French resistance as Krystyna Skarbek had told them to do.
45.
Krystyna Skarbek rushed back from the Col de Larche, halting briefly along the way to meet a recently arrived 10-man allied military mission.
46.
Krystyna Skarbek told them that, in Cammaerts' absence, she was in charge and arranged transportation for them.
47.
Krystyna Skarbek tried without success to persuade French resistance leaders to storm the prison in Digne and rescue Cammaerts and the others.
48.
Krystyna Skarbek then put aside her aversion to bicycles, and cycled 40 kilometres to Digne.
49.
Krystyna Skarbek responded in kind, confirming that he was within.
50.
Krystyna Skarbek managed to meet with Captain Albert Schenck, an Alsatian who acted as liaison officer between the local French prefecture and the Gestapo.
51.
Krystyna Skarbek introduced herself as Cammaerts' wife and a niece of British General Bernard Montgomery and threatened Schenck with terrible retribution if harm came to the prisoners.
52.
Krystyna Skarbek informed SOE in London and two million francs were air-dropped to her.
53.
Krystyna Skarbek met him in Schenck's apartment at four in the afternoon.
54.
Krystyna Skarbek got into the automobile without a nod of recognition and they thought that she too was a prisoner.
55.
Several years later, Krystyna Skarbek told another Pole and fellow World War II veteran that, during her negotiations with the Gestapo, she had been unaware of any danger to herself.
56.
Krystyna Skarbek did not and was murdered by a person or persons unknown.
57.
Krystyna Skarbek's wife kept the bribe money and, after the war, attempted to exchange it for new francs.
58.
Krystyna Skarbek was arrested but was released after the authorities investigated her story.
59.
Krystyna Skarbek was able to exchange the money for only a tiny portion of its value.
60.
Krystyna Skarbek had promised Waem he would not be arrested by the British, and battled with SOE leaders with some success to protect him.
61.
Digne was liberated by the American army two days after Krystyna Skarbek rescued Cammaerts, Fielding, and Sorensen.
62.
Krystyna Skarbek addressed the Poles with a megaphone and secured their agreement to join the Allied forces, provided that they shed their German uniforms.
63.
Kowerski and Krystyna Skarbek were now fully reconciled with the Polish forces and were preparing to be dropped into Poland in early 1945.
64.
Krystyna Skarbek's exploits were recognised with award of the George Medal.
65.
Krystyna Skarbek was ultimately naturalised in December 1946 after returning to Britain and threatening to refuse her George Medal and OBE.
66.
Unable to find work, Krystyna Skarbek went to Nairobi, Kenya Colony to join Michael Dunford, an old lover, but the British colonial government turned down her application for a work permit.
67.
Krystyna Skarbek returned to London where she became in turn a telephone operator, a salesperson, a waitress, and a cabin steward on ocean liners.
68.
On one of the passenger ships, the Ruahine, the crew, including Krystyna Skarbek, were required to wear any medals they had been awarded during the war.
69.
Krystyna Skarbek's body was identified by her cousin Andrzej Skarbek.
70.
Krystyna Skarbek's assailant was Dennis Muldowney, the obsessed man who had worked with her as a steward on Ruahine and was at the time of her murder a Reform Club porter.
71.
Krystyna Skarbek's ashes were flown to London and interred at the foot of Skarbek's grave.
72.
In 1971, the Shellbourne Hotel was bought by a Polish group; in a storeroom, they found Krystyna Skarbek's trunk, containing her clothes, papers, and SOE issue dagger.
73.
On 3 May 2016 BBC Radio 4 broadcast an episode of Great Lives in which Krystyna Skarbek's life was proposed by Lt General Sir Graeme Lamb, with Clare Mulley as the expert witness.
74.
Krystyna Skarbek is portrayed by Morgane Polanski in the upcoming film The Partisan.