Halina Kłąb-Szwarc. The youngest female secret agent in the Home Army

In the spring of 1943, Halina Kłąb was sent on a two-week training course on marine warfare. There, she learned to identify different types of ships, as well as their weapons systems and water displacement levels. Soon afterwards, she went to Hamburg. There were already a large number of agents in the city with orders to gather information about the German armaments industry and to crack the codes for the air defence systems. Halina posed as a tourist in the city: a young girl with a camera and travel guide was unlikely to attract suspicion. She met a young man who worked as a ferry operator for workers in the dockyards. He invited her to join him on a tour of the port. This enabled her to discover and photograph a number of facilities, including several used for military purposes.

This information, which she passed on to the Allies would later play a key role. At the end of July and the beginning of August 1943, the British RAF and American USAAF conducted a series of carpet-bombing raids on Hamburg known as “Operation Gomorrah”. After the air attacks, during which 1.7 million high explosive bombs and firebombs were dropped onto the city, most of its buildings were left in ruins. 1.2 million people fled Hamburg from one day to the next.[4] The Allies succeeded in destroying all the submarine docks as well as a diesel engine plant. This was a major blow to the German armaments capacities and brought the country’s second-largest city to a complete standstill for a short time. The Polish government in exile in London awarded Halina Kłąb the Bronze Cross of Merit with Swords – a medal for bravery for non-combat activities – for revealing the location of the military facilities.

Halina’s next assignment was in Berlin. She volunteered to work in the Central Archive for Military Medicine (Zentralarchiv für Wehrmedizin). There, she gained access to sensitive data on the state of the German Army. Her task was to supply information about soldiers wounded at the front. She also had access to names and locations of military units, as well as the number of wounded. This information was passed on to Poland and from there, to the Allies.

In May 1944, Halina travelled to Łódź to visit her mother. She was also told by her superior to take time to rest. However, shortly after her arrival, she and her mother were arrested by the Gestapo in her parents’ flat. Halina was accused of underground activities. It later emerged that she had been betrayed by a spy. The two women were taken to the Gestapo prison at 13 Danzigerstrasse (today: ul. Gdańska) in Łódź. Halina was brutally interrogated multiple times. The most commonly used method of torture were blows to the back and heels. Gas masks were used to quieten the prisoners if they screamed too loudly. However, despite being tortured and humiliated, Halina did not give any names away. Finally, she was sentenced to death without a trial. Her mother was deported to Ravensbrück concentration camp.

Halina Kłąb spent eight months in prison. For about 12 days, she was forced to sit in the “dark cell” – a completely dark space that was so low it was not possible to stand upright. In mid-January 1945, as Soviet troops approached the city, the Germans decided to “evacuate” the prison, transporting the prisoners westwards in order to “liquidate” them there. 

Barbara Cygańska-Wiland, a fellow prisoner, described the situation in Łódź that night: “Towards midnight, we were also led out of the prison in groups of eight. We walked through the city down the pitch black, empty streets towards Chojny, along Pabianicka Avenue towards Pabianice. It was a clear, ice-cold, starry night. Civilians were fleeing with everything they owned along all the streets that led out of the city. There were carts everywhere carrying children and the elderly. They were all Germans who had been settled in the farms that had once belonged to the Polish farmers who had been driven out.”[5] Both women managed to escape under the cover of darkness. Soon afterwards, others followed their example. The female German prison guards, who were clearly nervous, were coming under increasing time pressure as they fled from the Soviets, and didn’t have the will to search for them.