Krystyna Skarbek was born in Poland and escaped to England


 Krystyna Skarbek was born in Poland and escaped to England after her country was taken by Germany during World War II. She quickly volunteered to become a spy and even suggested her own first mission. Her idea was to go to Hungary, print propaganda flyers, then ski through the mountains into Poland to hand them out. Once there, she planned to help the Polish resistance and carry out intelligence work.


The British Special Operations Executive (SOE) agreed to her plan, and she left for Budapest in December 1939. She succeeded in getting into Warsaw, where she carried out her mission of helping the resistance and gathering intelligence. Her success became so well-known that posters offering a reward for her capture were displayed in train stations across Poland. To protect herself, she later changed her name to Christine Granville.


In 1941, she was caught by the Gestapo, but she tricked them into believing she had tuberculosis by biting her tongue until she bled and coughed it up. They released her, and she managed to reach SOE headquarters in Cairo, Egypt. For a time, she was suspected of being a double agent and removed from duty, but after an investigation, she was cleared. Still, SOE decided it was too dangerous to send her back to Poland or Hungary, even though she wanted to return.


In 1944, she parachuted into France to support the French resistance. She worked on missions that brought together Italian partisans and the French fighters. At the Italian border, she was once stopped by German guards who told her to raise her hands. When she did, she revealed a grenade under each arm with the pins already pulled. She threatened to drop them, and the guards ran away. Another one of her bold actions was persuading a Gestapo officer to release three British prisoners—set to be executed—by negotiating their freedom in exchange for 2 million francs.

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