STEFANIA JUNG-MOCHNACKA

STEFANIA JUNG-MOCHNACKA
nee Przybył
*26.12.1913 in Berlin
+24.7.1973 in Kraków

Stefania was born in Berlin, the youngest of five children of Andrzej Przybył and Marianna, née Malinowska. Her eldest sister was Helena Maćkowiak. She grew up within Berlin’s Polish community. She was a member of the Polish Scouting and Guiding Association, led the 1st Polish Girl Guide Troop “Queen Jadwiga”, and was active in the “Sokół” Gymnastic Society and the Union of Poles in Germany. Like Helena before her, Stefania trained as a dressmaker and in 1931 began working at her sister’s fashion salon at Mommsenstraße 21. She also lived there, in a flat that served as a meeting place for members of the Polish resistance. At the same time, as a German citizen fluent in Polish, she worked as a censor at the Auslandsbriefprüfstelle, the Wehrmacht office responsible for monitoring foreign correspondence. Zygmunt Witczak, an agent of the ZWZ–AK intelligence network “Stragan”, recruited her to intercept information of potential intelligence value.

In late November 1942, Stefania removed two letters from her workplace and passed them via Helena to Witczak. When he was arrested in Hamburg carrying the letters, he identified Stefania as his source. She was arrested on 25 November 1942. Together with her sisters Helena and Irena, she was initially held at the police prison on Alexanderplatz and later transferred to Fuhlsbüttel remand prison in Hamburg, where they were to be confronted with other arrested members of the network. The People’s Court sentenced Stefania and Helena to death for treason and espionage.

At Alt-Moabit Prison, Stefania began starving herself and secretly fashioned a rope from strips torn from blankets. Every evening, she practised climbing up to the window and squeezing between the bars. She spent the final night before the scheduled execution with Helena in the same cell. Helena was unable to fit through the bars. She persuaded Stefania to escape without her, telling her to think of their mother, who would not survive the loss of both daughters. In the early hours of the morning, Stefania squeezed through the window bars, which were only 15.3 by 35.3 centimetres apart. Injured in the process, she lowered herself down on the makeshift rope and disappeared into the city. She subsequently went into hiding in Berlin and Pomerania.

She is the only known woman to have escaped from Alt-Moabit Prison after being sentenced to death. After the war, she married Włodzimierz Jung-Mochnacki and settled in Kraków, where she died in 1973. She was awarded the Gold Cross of Merit and the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta.

Stefania Przybył with her sister, Helena Maćkowiak during a trip to Cracow, July 1939. Photo: Helena Lehr, Edmund Osmańczyk, Polacy spod znaku Rodła, Wydawnictwo Ministerstwa Obrony Narodowej, Warszawa 1972. Scan: Anna Krenz

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