This is the incredible story of Elżbieta Zawacka, the WW2 female resistance fighter known as Agent Zo, told here for the first time.
Agent Zo was the only woman to reach London from Warsaw during the Second World War as an emissary of the Polish Home Army command. In Britain she became the only woman to join the Polish elite Special Forces, known as the ‘Silent Unseen’.
She was secretly trained in the British countryside, and then was the only female member of these SOE affiliated forces to be parachuted back behind enemy lines to Nazi-occupied Poland. There, while being hunted by the Gestapo, who arrested her entire family, she took a leading role in the Warsaw Uprising and the liberation of Poland.
After the war she was demobbed as one of the most highly-decorated women in Polish history. Yet the Soviet-backed post-war Communist regime not only imprisoned her, but also ensured that her remarkable story remained hidden for over forty years.
Now, through new archival research and exclusive interviews with people who knew and fought alongside Zo, Clare Mulley brings this forgotten heroine back to life, and also transforms how we see the history of women’s agency in the Second World War.
Agent Zo: the Untold Story of Fearless WW2 Resistance Fighter Elżbieta Zawacka by Clare Mulley is published on 16 May, 2024.
And Clare talks to Carolyn Kirby about researching and writing her book in Historia.
Our list of over 160 historical books, both fiction and non-fiction, coming out this year may give you some more reading inspiration.
