Krystyna Wituska (1920–1944)

The main proceedings against the accused Polish women were held on 19 April 1943 in Berlin-Charlottenburg. Wanda Kamińska was sentenced to three years’ hard labour with harsh conditions of detention. Maria Kacprzyk was sentenced to eight years’ hard labour. Krystyna Wituska was the only one of the three to be sentenced to death for “espionage, assisting the enemy and making preparations for high treason”. The decision to impose the highest penalty was made after Wituska pleaded guilty to her underground activities, while the other two women pursued other defence strategies. They claimed before the court that they were still in training as secret service agents, and that they had therefore not had access to any important information. Krystyna made a conscious decision not to follow a similar line of defence, assuming that the court would not believe these claims. After hearing the mild punishments meted out to Kacprzyk and Kamińska, she made an attempt to change the course of her fate. However, her efforts were in vain: Adolf Hitler, to whom she had addressed her request for clemency, rejected her appeal. 

After her verdict was made final, Wituska was again taken to the prison in Moabit, where she awaited her execution with Maria Kasprzycka and Lena Dobrzyska in cell no. 18. Wanda Kamińska was placed in a different cell. Then, in August 1943, a regular exchange of letters began between the three prisoners in cell 18 and 16-year-old Helga Grimpe, the daughter of the prison guard Hedwig Grimpe. Helga was impressed by the solidarity among the women in the cell, by their conviviality and their reconciliation with their fate. She dubbed them “the clover leaf”. She also procured medicines, cigarettes and apples for them, which were passed on to the women by her mother. Helga’s letters were flushed down the toilet by the three prisoners immediately after they had read them. Helga, however, carefully stored away the messages she received from them in return. They contained requests for certain items, but above all words of gratitude for her help. Helga’s mother Hedwig, a warder in the prison, was called “sunshine” by the young women. 60 years later, the bundle of letters became the basis for the book by Simone Trieder and Lars Skowronski, “Zelle Nr. 18 – eine Geschichte von Mut und Freundschaft” (“Cell No. 18 – a Story of Courage and Friendship”), a report on the story of an unusual friendship between three Polish women prisoners and the young daughter of a warder. Today, the letters can be found in the archive of the Instytut Pamięci Narodowej (the Institute for National Remembrance).