Halina Szymanska

Halina Szymańska was the wife of Colonel Antoni Szymański, the last prewar Polish military attaché in Berlin.

After being recruited by the Allied secret intelligence services (via Polish officers in Bern, Switzerland, who made contact with the British), Halina provided a conduit of information between the Allies and Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, chief of the German Abwehr. In autumn 1939 he helped her and her children move from occupied Poland to Switzerland in compensation for a contact with the British Secret Intelligence Service.

Szymańska, as a British agent, met several times with Canaris in Switzerland and Italy. Then she met with his courier, Hans Bernd Gisevius. She played an important role, as an intermediary, in secret contacts between the Allies and German anti-Nazi conspirators (e.g., the Schwarze Kapelle). In April 1940 she received information about the coming German attack on France and the Benelux countries. In mid-June 1941 she received information about the coming German attack on the Soviet Union. During World War II she became one of the most effective MI6 agents.

After the war Szymańska moved to England. She had three daughters with Col. Szymański: Hanka, Ewa and Marysia. All four spent the war in Switzerland, where Halina began her work for MI6 and later the French Deuxieme Reseau, conducting courier work into occupied France, for which she was decorated by the French. Among others, she developed a working relationship with the American Allen Dulles, who then headed the American OSS intelligence office in Bern. [Dulles became the first civilian and the longest-serving Director of Central Intelligence. [De facto head of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. By all accounts he was very supportive of Szymańska, particularly when her daughter Hanka became ill and died in Switzerland.]

After World War II, Halina Szymańska married General Kazimierz Wiśniowski, who had been Chief of Staff to General Władysław Anders, commander of the Second Polish Corps at the Battle of Cassino in 1944. She settled in Ealing, a suburb of London. She lies buried with her second husband in South Ealing Cemetery.