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

As Halina Kłąb-Szwarc admitted many years later in an interview for “Wysokie Obcasy”: “When the war came to an end, I was in my early twenties, but I felt like a 60-year-old.”[6] However, the end of the war did not result in the return to normality for which Halina longed. During the first months after the war, she went underground in order to avoid being arrested by the Polish Security Service (Urząd Bezpieczeństwa, UB). It was not until 1946 that she underwent a legal rehabilitation process before a court in Łódź. Her superiors in the Home Army confirmed that she had only asked for her name to be added to the Deutsche Volksliste at the request of the Army leadership.

Halina then moved to Poznań, where she continued the medical studies that she had begun in Vienna and married Andrzej Szwarc. However, the future for former members of the Home Army was anything but bright. They were harassed by the security services in the communist People’s Republic of Poland. Halina underwent multiple interrogations lasting for several hours, even when she was heavily pregnant. In 1951, she was forced to give up her job as a researcher at the Medical University (Akademia Medyczna) in Poznań due to her past activities. Halina Kłąb-Szwarc had two children: a son, Andrzej (b. 1951) and a daughter, Anna (b. 1958). In the years that followed, she changed jobs several times and conducted research, mainly in the field of thyroid diseases among patients from Greater Poland. She was also one of the first doctors to initiate comprehensive medical examinations of concentration camp survivors.

However, it was not until 1964, when Halina Kłąb-Szwarc moved to Warsaw, that her scientific career took off. She became vice-dean and later vice-rector of the Warsaw sports academy (Akademia Wychowania Fizycznego). At 52, she turned to an entirely new area of research: gerontology, or the study of ageing processes. She became a highly regarded expert in the field. One of her most important achievements in this area was the establishment of a university for senior citizens (Uniwersytet Trzeciego Wieku, UTW) in Warsaw in 1975. A similar institution in Toulouse in France served as an inspiration for the project. Later, the university was named after Halina Szwarc. Together with France and Belgium, Poland was initially only the third country in the world offering this form of support and education for retired people.[7] Currently there are more than 500 universities for senior citizens (including branch offices) throughout the country, with around 90,000 students.[8]

Prof. Halina Kłąb-Szwarc received numerous awards for her services during the Second World War, including the Bronze and Silver Cross of Merit with Swords (for her assignments in Hamburg and Berlin) and the highest military order of merit in Poland, the Virtuti Militari. She was also presented with the Order of Polonia Restituta Second Class Commander’s Cross with Star.

For years, neither her relatives nor her colleagues knew anything about her activities during the Second World War. It was not until 1999, when her book, “Wspomnienia z pracy w wywiadzie ZWZ-AK” (“Memories of My Work in the ZWZ and AK Secret Service) was published, that the world found out about the extraordinary story of the young secret agent. The book was used as the basis for the filmed theatre performance “Doktor Halina” (2008, director: Marcin Wrona) and the documentary film “Najmłodsza agentka” (2023, director: Magdalena Majewska).

Halina Kłąb-Szwarc died in 2002 aged 79. She was buried in the family grave in the Powązki cemetery in Warsaw.

Monika Stefanek, October 2024

My thanks to Prof. Andrzej Szwarc, son of Prof. Halina Kłąb-Szwarc, for providing the material that helped me write this article.