You couldn’t make it up

Title: Agent Zo

The untold story of fearless WW2 Resistance fighter Elżbieta Zawacka

Author: Clare Mulley

Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicholson; 2025

ISBN: 978-1399601085

Price: £12.99 (hardback)

Short-listed for the 2025 Women's Prize for Non-fiction

Elżbieta Zawacka, born in 1909, grew up as the seventh of eight children on the outskirts of Toruń in Poland. However, Toruń was in Prussian-annexed territory and, despite their Polish roots, people were forbidden to speak their own language. The children grew up speaking German, going to German schools and surrounded by German culture. Any evidence of Polish culture incurred severe punishment but Elżbieta’s mother secretly observed national traditions which she inculcated in her children.

Toruń was among the territories incorporated into the reborn Polish Republic in 1919. Despite being determined to be a part of this new Poland, Elżbieta found that speaking only German she was ridiculed so she learnt Polish and was rewarded with a place at a Polish school, going on to graduate in mathematics from Poznań University.

While at university she attended a session with the new Women’s Military Training Association (PWK) and declared that their ‘concept of trained and armed women engaging in military defence had “set her on fire”.’ In 1931 she attended a month-long PWK camp and discovered that she ‘could love mathematics and the military for their own sake and in her own right, as a woman and a soldier.’ From then on she would fight for the military role of women to be recognised but that didn’t happen until 1943.

In 1939, Elżbieta, who still spoke perfect German, had a fair complexion and had already spent many months crossing wartime borders, volunteered to smuggle material between Warsaw and Berlin. Once the call came, she chose the nom-de-guerre Zo. Travelling on false papers, she smuggled secret documents into the heart of Nazi Germany, which arrived in London seven days later. Throughout the following winter, Zo rushed between Warsaw and Berlin “like a whirlwind.”

In May 1942 Zo’s underground network was infiltrated, leaving her as the only one not arrested by the Gestapo. However, she was being followed and, despite being afraid of heights, she jumped from a moving train to evade capture.

With her identity compromised, she was then appointed to carry intelligence between Warsaw and London. She was the only woman to serve in this capacity and her journey would take her through Germany, France and Spain, including a ride inside a train’s water tender when she nearly drowned. She went on to be the only woman to parachute from Britain back into Nazi-occupied Poland and played a major part in the Warsaw Uprising.

This is an enthralling, detailed biography about a brave, uncompromising woman.

Tessa Briggs