Polish Spy was determined, very patriotic

[Annelie]

Polish spy was determined, 'very patriotic'
Alan Hustak, Canwest News Service
Published: Monday, March 03, 2008


Maria Lacisz was an intelligence officer in the Polish army who spied on the Communists in her country even before the Second World War began.

Captured by Russians during the war, Lacisz was jailed in Moscow, released and eventually decorated for her contributions.

She was 98 when she died at the Polish Canadian Welfare Institute in Montreal Jan. 2 from injuries sustained in a fall.

"Her life was defined by courage," said Maria Stronski, general secretary of the Association for Restitution of Human Rights Abuses.

"She would leave her young son under the care of servants by day so she could train as a spy. I think she never forgave herself for the fact that she was a better intelligence officer than she was a mother. Even her husband didn't know what she was up to. She was extremely determined, very Catholic and very patriotic. She lived by the motto that things can only get better tomorrow."

Maria Lipska was born into an influential Polish family in Szepietowka, Poland, on Sept. 6, 1909. The daughter of a Polish legionnaire, she was raised in Lusk and became a schoolteacher. In 1928, she married Jozeph Lacisz, who was in the army, and they had a son, Richard.

While teaching in Krupka, she became district school superintendent and joined the Polish army. During the school year she taught, engaging in espionage during the summer and winter breaks.

The Germans smashed into Poland from the west, north and south in September, 1939. Before the month's end, Soviet troops crossed the eastern border and annexed eastern Poland to Ukraine.

The Soviets banned the teaching of Polish history and literature in the schools, and Lacisz was arrested, ostensibly because she refused orders to remove a crucifix from her classroom.

Her son, then 10 years old, was shipped to a labour camp in Siberia, and her husband was arrested and sentenced to death.

Lacisz was sentenced to eight years in prison in Moscow.

In 1941, when the Polish Committee of Liberation was established in Russia to drive the Germans out of Poland, there was an amnesty.

She was given a permit by Russian Field Marshall Georgi Zukhov to leave the country with her family.

While searching for her son in Russia, she narrowly escaped death when she slipped under a train and believed that she survived only because of a miracle.

She was reunited with her husband and her son and then she worked as a nurse at the American Hospital in Meshed, Iran. The family moved to Iraq, then settled in Palestine where she became head nurse at a military training camp in Gaza.

In 1947, Lacisz and her family went on to England, where she worked at the Polish Hospital in East Everleigh, Wiltshire, for two years before immigrating to Canada. Here, her husband got work as a farm labourer, then found a job at Seagram's. She worked in the kitchen at the Mt. Royal Hotel until she retired in 1975.

"She was very intelligent, impossibly determined," said her son, Richard.

"She rarely spoke of what she did during the war. She was trained as a spy, so she was tight-lipped. She always kept a low profile."

She was decorated with the bronze, silver and gold crosses of merit, and received other medals from the Polish government in exile

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