MARTA RACHEL

MARTA RACHEL
Codename: Rona
*26.5.1904 in Kępno
+2.11.1943 in Berlin-Plötzensee

Polish women who served as couriers for the Home Army (Armia Krajowa) travelled thousands of kilometres across occupied Europe. They formed the backbone of one of the largest intelligence networks of the Second World War. One of them was Marta Rachel, codename “Rona”.
While working as an accountant for the Binder company in Katowice, she was recruited in 1941 by Zygmunt Witczak to the ZWZ–AK courier and intelligence network “Stragan”. Rachel carried reports on armaments production, military transports and shipping in German ports, as well as money for clandestine operations, and maintained contacts with agents in Berlin, Breslau, Danzig, Hamburg and Stettin. She was in contact with other “Stragan” couriers, including Genowefa Młynarz, Marta Kosz and Pelagia Scheffczyk, and was part of the women-led intelligence network of the Polish resistance. The information they gathered was transmitted via Katowice and Kraków to the ZWZ–AK High Command and from there to the Polish government-in-exile in London.
Berlin was one of the most important hubs of the “Stragan” network. Marta Rachel recommended Jadwiga Neumann to Zygmunt Witczak as a trusted contact in Berlin. Soon afterwards, Neumann’s flat on Martin-Luther-Straße became one of the organisation’s contact points.
The Gestapo arrested Rachel on 1 December 1942 as part of a large-scale operation against the “Stragan” network. She was charged with wartime and intelligence espionage before the Third Senate of the People’s Court. In its written judgment, the court noted her composure and self-control during the trial, interpreting these qualities as evidence of her conscious involvement in intelligence activities. She was sentenced to death. At Alt-Moabit prison, fellow prisoners remembered her as a quiet, introspective woman. She rarely spoke about her own story and would sometimes sing softly.
Marta Rachel was executed at Berlin-Plötzensee Prison on 2 November 1943. Helena Maćkowiak, with whom she had worked in the “Stragan” network, was executed on the same day. Rachel’s body was transferred to the Anatomical Institute of Professor Hermann Stieve. The location of her burial remains unknown to this day.

Marta Rachel, a woman on the move.
Photo from family archive.

Contact:
ANNA KRENZ
krenzarch(at)gmail.com
+491772725096