12:05 More Lore Elżbieta Zawacka
This is the conclusion of the series on the Polish Resistance Fighter Elżbieta Zawacka. We talk about her time touring the World War II British Women's Auxiliary Services, including the FANY. Then we talk about her many arrests and the time she cosplayed as a nun.
Transcript
Welcome to More Lore where we talk more lore.
Speaker A:And today we are finishing up our talk about El Shpieta Ivatska.
Speaker A:I may be saying that name right this time.
Speaker A:I don't know.
Speaker A:Let's try.
Speaker A:So she, if to remind everybody, is a Polish resistance fighter spy.
Speaker A:I will say paratrooper, since she parachuted.
Speaker A:I'm not quite sure if that's a proper use of it.
Speaker A:I think paratrooper may be a specific term, but she parachuted into Poland, over into occupied Poland, which was occupied by the Nazis during World War II.
Speaker A:So we've talked about this in episode.
Speaker A:I probably should have looked at the other episode.
Speaker A:We just did season 12, episode five.
Speaker A:You can go hear part two of her story there.
Speaker A:Part one of her story is in season 11.
Speaker A:And I'll duct tape all these together and put them on together on YouTube so we can have one whole thing of them.
Speaker A:But.
Speaker A:So I just wanted to talk a little bit more about her life.
Speaker A:We're going to talk just a little bit before she jumped out of the plane and then a little just talk about what happened after she jumped out of the plane because her life continued to go on.
Speaker A:She cosplays as a nine.
Speaker A:She gets arrested a bunch of times.
Speaker A:So just some fun facts about her life that I wanted to share.
Speaker A:So what we said in part two was that she was doing a lot of campaigning to get women into get recognized in part of military service.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Because women during especially the Polish army at that time and in Britain's army were auxiliary services.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:They weren't necessarily entrenched into the actual military, which just meant that they weren't entitled to some of the same privileges.
Speaker A:You said there are some kind of bonuses sometimes from being outside of that wheelhouse.
Speaker A:But she wanted to make sure that women got the recognition so that they deserved.
Speaker A:So in order to do that, she wanted to learn all she could though about the Polish and British Women's Auxiliary Service, because that's what everybody was saying they should emulate.
Speaker A:So she was like, okay, if I'm going to talk about this, I need to know.
Speaker A:So the newish Polish Woman's Auxiliary Service, known as the PESCI P E S T pest key from its Polish acronym, A psk, which translates as pips or seedlings, have been formed from a group of Polish forces who had been deported to Siberia.
Speaker A:Female volunteers of approach.
Speaker A:So they had gone to like when the military went to France to fight and other places and the women went with them as auxiliary services.
Speaker A:They got deported with them.
Speaker A:They got deported to Siberia.
Speaker A:And so the female volunteers of appropriate age, even if they weren't, but that's only where they came from.
Speaker A:So the female volunteers of appropriate age received training to become medics, welfare and education officers, cooks, clerks, coders, wireless operators and military drivers.
Speaker A:There have been Polish pips in Britain led by women who had not been members of the PWK that Auschwieta belonged to or had any military training or which was something that Elspieta scorned as men do.
Speaker A:They made an officer's wife who knew nothing a commander.
Speaker A:Ooh, burn.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:She had less contempt for the British women's auxiliaries, it seems.
Speaker A:And there was many, many organizations in Britain during WW2 with hundreds of thousands of women volunteering.
Speaker A:I do believe that Britain also had a conscription where you had to choose between what you were going to do and you could volunteer to like help out in factories or to, to go, you know, volunteer with one of these organizations.
Speaker A:So 6,000 of those volunteered with the first aid nursing.
Speaker A:Yea, Manry or Fanny, likened to combat medics.
Speaker A:They earned their names for riding horses to rescue wounded soldiers.
Speaker A:And although they were wore uniforms, they were not part of the British armed forces.
Speaker A: So they changed their name in: Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Basically they're like combat medics is really their main job, you transporting, you know, wounded things.
Speaker A:And they would do first aid but.
Speaker B:Triaging, triaging and moving, not necessarily providing full nursing services.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:And also just being like, hey, we're not nurses.
Speaker A:Those are different.
Speaker A:That's a different type of thing.
Speaker A:Stop probably did.
Speaker A:They probably were like stop calling us nurses.
Speaker A:So during the Second World War, Fannie supported the soe, which was a special operation.
Speaker A:Executives we were talking about last time as coders, signal signalers, forgers, dispatchers and most famously as agents.
Speaker A:Since they were independent from the British military.
Speaker A:Fanny women could bear arms and they were trained because women, if they were associated with the British army, you couldn't have combat.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And you couldn't carry arms.
Speaker A:But since they're not in the military, they get to have guns.
Speaker A:So they were trained in firearms and explosives and they got set in where men couldn't go.
Speaker A:Fanny was designated to provide support for the Polish troops that were stationed in Britain.
Speaker A:Auschwiade sought a meeting with their commander and was directed to Staff Commander Marion Gramwell, a World War I vet whose friends called a queer fish and who the younger fannies called a battle axe.
Speaker A:Granwell offered Elspeta tours of all the women's bases across England and Scotland.
Speaker A:So she visited the Royal Air Force's Bentley Priory, a formal royal residence, and the nearby Women's Auxiliary Air Forces Training Center.
Speaker A:At Royal Air Force Kenley, she met WAF plotters on radar duty.
Speaker A:So in the middle of the room there was a table shaped like the British aisles, divided into sections and manned by headphone wafts.
Speaker A:I think I'm saying that right.
Speaker A:Who moved tiny model aircraft around the table based on the reports coming in over their headphones.
Speaker A:And I'm assuming they made tiny airplane noises as they did that because I would just be like, like, okay, we're coming in, we're moving over this British aisles.
Speaker A:But that just seems like a really cool job.
Speaker A:So she also visited Canard House in the central lowlands of Scotland.
Speaker A:The Polish military had taken over this manor.
Speaker A:There she saw courses in weather forecasting and driving armored vehicles, which led her to take a ride in a tank.
Speaker A:I really only put this in so I could talk about why I think we all think it would be fun to ride in a tank.
Speaker A:Correct?
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:I, I don't think there's a single person who is like would turn that down.
Speaker A:I think everyone, it just seems like it would be fun.
Speaker A:Yeah, I agree.
Speaker B:I have not ridden a tank.
Speaker B:I've written some cool things.
Speaker B:Not a tank.
Speaker A:Not a tank.
Speaker A:So I'm just saying, I mean, I don't want to be in this probably.
Speaker A:I don't want to be in the circumstance where I could write you need.
Speaker B:To be in a tank.
Speaker A:Yeah, but I need to be in one.
Speaker A:But I would like to voluntarily ride in a tank.
Speaker A:That would be fun.
Speaker A:So, all right, so that is about our tank.
Speaker B:Live out our tank girl dreams.
Speaker A:Live out my tank girl dream.
Speaker A:Correct.
Speaker A:Am I already.
Speaker A:That's why my hair is shaved the way it is.
Speaker A:So that's a little bit about her time before she jumped out of a plane.
Speaker A:Now we're going.
Speaker A:She's never going to after she jumped out of the plane.
Speaker A:And so we're going to.
Speaker A:Right before the Warsaw Uprising.
Speaker A:So Al Spietta took refuge in a convent dressing in the postulants uniform of dark blue.
Speaker A:This was a very quote a postulant uniform.
Speaker A:A dark blue cotton with a close fitting white cap.
Speaker A:A dull version of the sisters more picturesque sapphire and white robes.
Speaker A:So apparently that if you're a postulate you got really boring dark cotton.
Speaker A:And if you were a nun you got these awesome sapphire robes, which I guess I would also be jealous of.
Speaker A:Yeah, so.
Speaker A:But she totally cosplayed being a nun.
Speaker A:She started her days at five with prayers in the chapel, followed by silent meditation, psalms, and sometimes Gregorian chanting.
Speaker A:Ever the school teacher, she taught the girls, but also helped with the farm's physical labor.
Speaker A:Other than that, she got left alone, which she just thought was fine because there was a lot for her to process.
Speaker A:She stayed at the convent until she just couldn't take it anymore and returned to the city, where she briefed new recruits at the Home Army's Women's Military Service.
Speaker A:So now they had so many volunteers, there weren't enough munitions to go around.
Speaker A:So only those with the prior experience really got to serve in armed forces.
Speaker A:And the other women were put to work preparing and circulating new sheets and delivering messages, transporting weapons, food, and medicines, and serving as medics.
Speaker A:That makes sense, right?
Speaker A:So after the Warsaw Uprising, Elspeta was not going to surrender.
Speaker A:So we talked about this in part two, that when the Home army surrendered to the Nazis before the Soviet invasion, a lot of them surrendered and became prisoners of war.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:El Shvieta was not going to do that.
Speaker A:She was like, I'm getting the fuck out of Warsaw and I'm going back to the convent.
Speaker A:So she goes back the convent, she's got a companion named Vaka with her.
Speaker A:W, a, C, K, A. I'm assuming that's vodka.
Speaker A:And so the nuns, like, were very happy to see them.
Speaker A:They fed them, they clothed them, they put them on a train that terminated in the Polish holy city of Sestochowa.
Speaker A:I am putting this in here because that is a one Polish word I know that I'm saying correctly.
Speaker A:So they go to the holy city of Sestochowa, where they witness the daily unveiling of the Black Madonna at the monastery, which Elspieta found profoundly emotional.
Speaker A:As the icon, Han is known as the queen and protector of Poland and symbolizes both Polish patriotism and female defiance.
Speaker A:So from that kind of holy pit stop, she goes on, which is.
Speaker A:She's not very.
Speaker A:A sentimental person from most of the things we've talked about.
Speaker A:You know, she didn't want stockings.
Speaker A:She doesn't.
Speaker A:But to, like, take this time to, you know, to.
Speaker A:To witness something that was so important to Poland and has encountered in her stories before.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's cool.
Speaker A:Yep.
Speaker A:Meaningful.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So she goes on from there to Krakow to try and rebuild.
Speaker A:Rebuild farmstead.
Speaker A:After all the arrests and everybody's in prison during a side quest to test a route between Switzerland and France.
Speaker A:She dressed in deep widow's mourning attire with a dramatic black veil covering her face in the German style.
Speaker A:She now carried only the most basic identity papers and a travel permit to visit her wounded brother at the large military hospital near the Swiss border.
Speaker A:And she has another one of her shenanigan encounters where she's on a train and the woman next to her has paper, real papers from the hospitals that hers were faked from.
Speaker A:So, like, the woman has a real stamp on the papers, and hers was a Ford stamp that they just made up.
Speaker A:So she faints, okay?
Speaker A:She pretends to faint so that they forget about her for a couple of minutes and then they're like, oh, yeah, we forget what that stamp looked like.
Speaker A:Whatever.
Speaker A:Old lady in.
Speaker A:In Morningville's.
Speaker A:Oh, I'm so sorry.
Speaker A:Me bruter, me brutal, you know, so.
Speaker A:And they just ignore her.
Speaker A:And so that's how she was able to carry on her spying.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A: So In January of: Speaker A:And the city was over 80% destroyed.
Speaker A:The home army disbanded.
Speaker A:Emilia, her boss, gave Elspeth one last identity card in her real name and 20American dollars for.
Speaker A:For demobilization pay.
Speaker A:Germany surrenders in May.
Speaker A:But this is not the end of El story as a resistance fighter, because the Soviets come through and they start arresting and torturing everyone.
Speaker A:Eventually, 103 Soviet.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:And so as Poland is moving under their communist rule, all of the silent unseen, because they were associated with Britain, now they're saying they're all traitors because of that British connection.
Speaker A:So eventually, three of the silent unseen whom the SOE had helped trade were arrested and sentenced to either imprisonment or execution.
Speaker A: Poles between: Speaker A: Al was arrested in: Speaker A:And she was also accused of meeting to collect and transfer spy material with somebody else who had been arrested.
Speaker A:So she was tortured, but she did not snitch.
Speaker A:She was sentenced to 10 years.
Speaker A:She went to Fordham Prison, which had previously been used by the Nazis.
Speaker A:There she began to teach the inmates, a crime punished by loss of privileges when discovered.
Speaker A:Later, she was transferred to a less harsh prison before being transferred to another one, where she was brought to teach mathematics to the detained population of girls who were aged 18 to 21.
Speaker A:And soon she was also teaching the guards Then running a correspondence course linked to the local high school, enabling both the prisoners and the guards to obtain high school diplomas.
Speaker A:Things, yeah, things did somewhat lighten up in the prisons.
Speaker A: in pissed himself and died in: Speaker A: In: Speaker A:Reasons.
Speaker A:But Elspeta still had work, trouble getting work as a teacher because of her arrest record.
Speaker A:So she goes up to the Minister of Education in Warsaw and wouldn't leave until she walked out with a permit saying that she was allowed to teach an official letterhead.
Speaker A: ling and got her doctorate in: Speaker A:She became a valued expert in correspondence education and eventually an associate professor at GDask University.
Speaker A:She labored tirelessly to build a correct army of the Home army and the Silent unseen's history.
Speaker A: In: Speaker A:And she was again detained a few months later.
Speaker A: In: Speaker A:She used the forced retirement to further her project of documenting the historical record.
Speaker A: tried to arrest her again in: Speaker A:But she gave them the slip by checking herself into a clinic that they did not think to look in for her.
Speaker A:She is very much an elderly lady at this time, but she's still just like, fuck off, I'm going like, no, no, I'm not going back to prison.
Speaker A: So in: Speaker A:She worked to tell the stories of service women into her 90s.
Speaker A:And she died at the age of 99, two months shy of 100.
Speaker A:Over 3,000 people came to her funeral.
Speaker A:She was carried through the streets of her hometown of Tehran on a cannon carriage and a gun salute was given over her grave and they had a military van and they had three aircraft that flew over to buzzer buzzer funeral.
Speaker A:So she got a cool send off and almost, almost 100 years old, but quite a life and just very interesting woman.
Speaker B:And yeah, yeah, well, in Poland, what didn't become, didn't, didn't shake communist rule until very late.
Speaker B:I mean, compared, yeah, it was not.
Speaker A:Yeah, it was not an easy time for her.
Speaker A:And, you know, I think she also.
Speaker A:She was able to go back to London, obviously, because she was getting, you know, things from the.
Speaker A:But trying.
Speaker B:It was like.
Speaker B:It was that in 89 to 90 was their transit or 91 was their transition away from communism.
Speaker B:So it's very recent.
Speaker B:And so.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:She had the secret police looking at her the entire time, especially because they're.
Speaker A:She's trying to create.
Speaker A:And I think, you know, that's one of the reasons that beyond the stuff that she was doing during the war, which of course is fascinating, you know, she's crossing mountains and carrying secret documents.
Speaker B:You know, parachuting in.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Doing all this cool stuff.
Speaker A:But just the fact that she kept doing this throughout her life and knowing that it was so important that this record be true and that history be.
Speaker A:Be accurate and not what somebody.
Speaker A:What the.
Speaker A:You know, what the victors are claiming it was and risking so much to do it.
Speaker A:And it says also such a hard thing that, you know, they.
Speaker A:Because she was such a forceful person, a lot of the archives and histories, apparently she kind of just bullied her way into.
Speaker A:She would just like, go to people and be like, you're doing this?
Speaker A:And they're like, okay, we'll do this.
Speaker A:Yes, ma'.
Speaker A:Am.
Speaker B:Sometimes you just gotta walk with a purpose.
Speaker B:Right, Right.
Speaker A:So that is the story and of Agent Zoe.
Speaker B:That's awesome.
Speaker B:Very cool.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:As we awkwardly once again end more lore.
Speaker A:More.
