Krystyna Skarbek was a brilliant Polish spy renowned for her free and wild ways.  Today we celebrate the anniversary of her death. 

Skarbek was born in Warsaw in 1908 to a family of Jewish bankers. She grew up into an extremely beautiful woman and in 1929 she won a beauty pageant. Throughout her life she was courted by men. Her first marriage to industrialist Karol Gettlich in 1933 was rather brief. In 1938 she married the writer Jerzy Gizycki.

She heard about the outbreak of World War II while in Kenya where her husband was serving as a diplomat. Subsequently, they returned to Europe. Skarbek made use of her connections and volunteered for the British Intelligence Service. Her nom de guerre was Christine Granville and she was an agent of the British Special Operations Service (SOE). She became celebrated for her daring exploits in intelligence and irregular warfare-missions in Nazi-occupied Poland and France. She helped Winston Churchill obtain information about the exact date of the German attack on Britain. 

Stories about her heroic and daredevil missions appear in her biography. She was considered to be one of Churchill’s favourite spies who on three occasions managed to outwit and avoid being captured by the Germans. Skarbek’s most famous exploit was securing the release of SOE agents Francis Cammaerts and Xan Fielding from a German prison hours before they were to be executed. She did so by meeting (at great personal risk) with the Gestapo commander in Digne-les-Bains, France, telling him she was a British agent, and persuading him with threats, lies, and a two million franc bribe to release the SOE agents. Word has it that at some point of time she met Ian Fleming, had a brief affair with him and that she inspired him to create the character of Vesper Lind played by Ursula Andress in Casino Royal – the first of the James Bond movies.

On June 12, 1952, in London she was stabbed to death by a spurned suitor, Stewart Moldovny, who was subsequently hanged.   

Parts of her personal story are still unknown and there are some who believe that Skarbek’s unusual and extraordinary character did not get nearly enough exposure.

To read more about this interesting woman