Oxford Literary Festival: Clare Mulley talks about Agent Zo

    Clare Mulley, a historian who has written several books about women's contribution to the Allied Victory in World War 2, came to talk about her latest: AGENT ZO, which is perhaps the most enthralling of all.

    Its subject is Elzbieta Zawacka, known in the Polish Resistance as 'Zo'. Born of Polish parents in Silesia, which was then designated part of Prussia, she was brought up to speak and pass as German, training her as a perfect spy. In 1939 when Poland was invaded by Germany and Russia, she joined the Polish Women's Military Auxiliaries, being categorized as a non-combatant despite the risks she took to smuggle information out to allies under the noses of the Nazis. On one occasion she had to leap from an express train to avoid being caught; on another she posed as a waitress to avoid arrest.

   In 1943 she escaped via Berlin, Paris and Spain to reach Britain, where she worked to train the Polish army in exile, explaining to British officers the horrors that were going on in Poland under Nazi occupation: her own sister Clara had been sent to Ravensbruck. When the Allied invasion of Europe began she was parachuted back into Poland, which was involved in a fearsome three-cornered fight, as the occupying Russian Communists were no more welcome to the Polish Resistance than the Nazis. 

   After the war, the Communist government in Poland arrested and executed thousands of Polish Resistance fighters, and in 1951 Agent Zo was put in prison. It was not until long afterwards, under Lech Walesa in the 1990s, that she got any recognition and decoration for her intrepid career.

    This is a story that can change our ideas about WW2, about women's part in it, and about the nature of heroism. How could any spy film compete with this story? Clare Mulley is in the absolute forefront of women's history and has well deserved her award from the current Polish government.

   All books featured in the Oxford Literary Festival are on sale in Blackwell's and there are often signed or discounted copies available.

https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/search/

https://oxfordliteraryfestival.org/

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