Elżbieta Zahorska
A telegraph operator and a liaison officer. For tearing off a German propaganda poster she was imprisoned and shot by Gestapo. She is considered a precursor of minor sabotage.
[…] I will never forger the face of that girl, her shapely and confident features, or the look in her big blue eyes. Wearing a soldier’s jacket, she was completely calm and she did not show a hint of fear or anxiety. I could tell that she fought, weapon in hand. – priest Stanisław Tworkowski, prison chaplain, reminiscing about the young, 24 year old student.
She was born June 6, 1915 in Krucice near Wiaźka in the Smoleńsk county. She was the daughter of famous Polish chess player and lawyer, Eugeniusz Zahorski, and poet Anna Zahorska, who published under the nom de plume of Savitri. In the Zahorski household five children were growing up alongside Elżbieta. They were raised in a patriotic environment. Elżbieta’s sisters died in the Warsaw Uprising.
The family moved to Poland in 1918. After graduating from high school, in 1935 Elżbieta finished a telegraph operations course for young women in the Liaison Training Centre in Zegrze. The goal of the course, organised by the Military Affairs Ministry, was the thorough training of future telegraph operators to use and look after printing telegraphs, electrical telegraphs and sounders. The course, running in the years of 1927-1936, was part of the greater vision to establish a women’s military service. The printing telegraph’s technical features made it impossible for unauthorised people to decipher the dispatches. In the emergency of a war, it was to be a priceless means of communication between different divisions. The course’s alumni – Zegrzians – participated in military field training and later found employment in telegraph departments and the post. Telegraph operators could be drafted in the case of mobilisation.
After graduating from the course, Elżdbieta worked as a printing telegraph operator in Vilnius and later entered the Stefan Batory University in the same city. After some time she moved to Warsaw where she continued her education at the Warsaw University.
After the war broke out in 1939, she volunteered to defend the country. She joined the army. At first she worked as a field nurse, and later would deliver orders and reports on horseback, avoiding enemy fire. She was twice arrested by the Germans. Her first arrest happened due to her involvement with the anti-aircraft defence. She was operating a machine gun from the roof of the Post and Telecommunications Office building at Nowogrodzka Street in Warsaw. Not wanting for the machine guns to end up in enemy hands, she remained on site dismantling them. She was arrested by the Germans and sentenced to death by a court martial. As she was led from the court to a prison in Pruszków, she was asked her final wish. She wanted to eat something nice. She was taken to a restaurant, from where she managed to flee. She was arrested again few weeks later when she was caught tearing off German propaganda posters at the Napoleon Square. The posters showed a demise of the Polish army and state, and its tragic nature was accentuated by the phrase “England, this is your doing!”. The tearing off of the posters was a display of rebellion against the occupant which made Elżbieta the precursor of minor sabotage.
After her imprisonment in the Pawiak prison, she was executed in November of 1939. Until this day we do not know exactly when she died (2nd or 3rd of November). Her death is believed to be the first official execution in occupied Warsaw. Her last words were aimed at the enemy in his own language: Noch ist Polen nicht verloren! – Poland has not yet perished.
