Resisting in everyday life

Resisting in everyday life – The war and life under an assumed name

During the occupation, Modrzewska survived under an assumed Polish identity while working, moving between places of refuge and participating in the underground resistance. She also tried to help others escape persecution, while navigating the complex intersections of her Jewish identity, gender and personal relationships.

After returning to Lublin, Modrzewska and her mother found themselves in immediate danger. During the occupation, she used the Polish surname Modrzewska. The name, which initially helped to conceal her Jewish identity, became part of her identity for many years.

Her experience of the war was, from the beginning, an experience of living between different identities. As Krystyna Mandelbaum, she belonged to the Jewish population persecuted by the Germans. As Krystyna Modrzewska, she lived on “Aryan papers” and had to convincingly present herself as Polish. At the same time, she was already struggling with a sense of gender identity that she could not easily place within the categories available to her. Later interpretations of her biography have therefore examined the intersection of her Polish, Jewish and queer identities.

Her wartime experience was one of constant tension: moving from place to place, hiding, obtaining documents and working. In 1941, she was sworn into the Home Army (Armia Krajowa), using the codename “Kret” (“Mole”). She also worked in the occupation administration, which gave her access to information and documents.

From 1943 onwards, she worked as an official in the county administration in Garwolin. She used her position for underground activities, including preparing documents for people at risk of arrest. At the same time, she tried to help others. During the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto, she managed to get out and attempted to rescue relatives and friends.

In her 1999 oral history interview, she recalled:

Her wartime relationships with women also had a personal dimension. In her account of the friend she helped escape from the ghetto, Modrzewska used deeply emotional language. She described her as “the most beautiful ideal” and later wrote about the pain associated with their relationship after the deaths of those close to her.

Contemporary categories should not, however, be imposed automatically on these wartime relationships. The sources do allow us to observe that women and relationships with women occupied a particularly important place in Modrzewska’s account of her own life.