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This post discusses the first public execution of a woman in occupied Europe during World War II. Content is shared solely for historical education and remembrance of victims.
Elżbieta Zahorska – The First Woman Publicly Executed in World War II
On the morning of 22 September 1939 – just three weeks after Germany invaded Poland – a 23-year-old Polish woman named Elżbieta Zahorska – “The nickname Zo” was led into the courtyard of Fort VII in the Warsaw Citadel.
She was a corporal (plutonowa) in the Polish Army’s 336th Battalion and, after the fall of Warsaw, one of the very first members of the underground resistance. She was caught on 19 September while carrying weapons and secret documents.
After three days of Gestapo torture at Aleje Szucha headquarters, she refused to speak.
The Germans decided to make an example of her. At 7:15 a.m. on 22 September, Elżbieta and a male comrade were brought before a firing squad in full view of thousands of Warsaw residents who had been ordered or forced to watch. Tied to posts, she stood straight and calm as the shots rang out. She died instantly.
Elżbieta Zahorska became the first woman to be publicly executed in occupied Europe during the entire Second World War.
They feared her as a serious threat to the Nazi security apparatus by maintaining a vital communication network for the Polish resistance movement, a network that the Germans could not completely dismantle. Her public execution was a calculated act by the Nazis intended to terrorize the populace, but ultimately, it transformed her into a martyr, fueling the will to resist.
After the war her name was given to streets and schools throughout Poland. At the very spot where she fell – now part of the Warsaw Uprising Museum – a plaque reads: “Elżbieta Zahorska – the first woman to give her life for a free Poland”.
We tell her story today to honour a 23-year-old who chose death over betrayal, and to pay tribute to the tens of thousands of Polish women who fought and fell during the darkest years of their nation.
Official sources:
Warsaw Uprising Museum
Władysław Bartoszewski, “Warsaw Death Ring 1939–1944”
Gestapo Warsaw files 1939 – Institute of National Remembrance (IPN)