Krystyna Skarbek: Christine Granville and British SOE
In the winter of 1939-40 a Polish countess skied across the mountain border from Hungary into occupied Poland, carrying money and messages for British intelligence. Krystyna Skarbek went on to serve with the Special Operations Executive in France, took the name Christine Granville, became a British subject and was killed in London in 1952.
Who was Krystyna Skarbek?
She was born Maria Krystyna Janina Skarbek in Warsaw on 1 May 1908. Her father, Count Jerzy Skarbek, was a Polish aristocrat; her mother, Stefania Goldfeder, came from a Jewish banking family. In November 1938 she married Jerzy Giżycki, and at the outbreak of war the couple went from southern Africa to London, where she offered her services to the Secret Intelligence Service.
The National Portrait Gallery holds a wartime portrait of her in the uniform of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY), the corps in which SOE enrolled its women agents.
Why she became Christine Granville
In January 1941 the Gestapo arrested her in Hungary with Andrzej Kowerski, a Polish officer who worked with her. She bit her tongue to fake coughing blood, a chest X-ray showed old scarring, and both were released as likely tuberculosis cases. After their escape they were given British passports and new names: she became Christine Granville, the name she kept when she was naturalised.
The National Archives has published a 1945 document supporting her naturalisation application, in which the writer discusses her signature in the name Granville and the advice she had received from an English solicitor in Cairo.
A planned final mission to Poland was cancelled, and as a former British agent she could not safely return to a Soviet-dominated country.
British intelligence, SOE and occupied Europe
Her missions into Poland began in the winter of 1939-40, before SOE existed. She smuggled money, arms and explosives, brought back intelligence (once on microfilm hidden in her gloves) and helped people escape. The National Portrait Gallery describes her as Britain’s first female and longest-serving special agent of the war.
After training as a wireless operator with SOE in Cairo, she parachuted into southern France on the night of 6/7 July 1944 and became courier, then second-in-command, to Francis Cammaerts. When Cammaerts and two other agents were arrested at Digne on 13 August 1944 and faced execution, she went to their captors, claimed a British landing was imminent, warned of the consequences if the prisoners were killed and paid a bribe of two million francs. All three were released. She received the George Medal, the OBE and the French Croix de Guerre.
Her records at The National Archives
The National Archives’ page on her naturalisation application shows an image of the document with a transcript and a short explanation.
The document comes from her SOE personnel file. Searching the catalogue under both Skarbek and Granville in the Discovery advanced search brings up the related records.
Our guide to The National Archives at Kew explains how its catalogue and reading rooms work.
London, her death and places of remembrance
After the war SOE paid her off, and she moved between short-lived jobs before working as a stewardess on passenger ships. From 1949 she lived at a hotel at 1 Lexham Gardens, Kensington, where an English Heritage blue plaque now commemorates her. On 15 June 1952 she was stabbed to death in the hotel hallway by Dennis Muldowney, a former shipmate who had stalked her; he was hanged later that year. She was buried in St Mary’s Roman Catholic Cemetery, Kensal Green.
A commemorative plaque to her is inside the cemetery chapel, recorded in the Imperial War Museums War Memorials Register.
The plaque gives her birth year as 1915; English Heritage and the National Portrait Gallery give 1908.
Our guide to Polish London covers the wider Polish community she lived among.
A relative who served under another name
If a relative’s wartime papers show two names, both belong in the research, since the Polish and British records may each use a different one.
Our guide to naturalisation records for Polish-born people explains the British side of that story, and our military research service follows the Polish service records.