2024 – Kate Mosse – Women Who Resisted
‘A follow-up story of two heroic sisters and two amazing coincidences’
By Martyn Bell – Co-Founder and Trustee, Chichester Marks Holocaust Memorial Day
On Holocaust Memorial Day, 27th January this year, I was privileged to watch the marvellous solo performance by Kate Mosse of ‘Women Who Resisted’-a one-woman show at Chichester Festival Theatre specially commissioned by the educational Charity ‘Chichester Marks Holocaust Memorial Day’.
The performance by novelist and historian Kate was masterful and moving- so moving in fact that I decided to send a copy of the Souvenir Programme to my long-time University friend Irving based in the USA.
I had always known that Irving’s relatives had taken part in the Polish Resistance in WW2 and that his Jewish father, having deliberately changed his surname, had escaped from Nazi -occupied Poland via Russia and then, after joining the famous ‘Ander’s Army’ led by Polish General Wladyslaw Anders in March 1942, eventually reached Polish Forces in Scotland via Iran, Iraq and Mandatory Palestine.
What I did know until Irving received and read the ‘Women Who Resisted’ Programme and then phoned me, was that Irving’s father was actually related, on his mother’s side, to Renia Kukielka, one of the seven heroic women featured by Kate in ‘Women Who Resisted’.
Irving then sent me a copy of the book the 19-year old Renia had written at the end of 1944, after she had reached Mandatory Palestine, titled ‘Escape from the Pit-A Woman’s Resistance in Nazi- Occupied Poland 1939-1943’.
After reading the book, I got back immediately to Irving because I thought Renia had been killed while acting as a Resistance courier in January 1944 and that was why her photo was featured in the Souvenir Programme. Irving explained the photo was mistakenly not of Renia but of Renia’s older sister Sarah who was indeed killed that year as a courier aged twenty-nine.
Both were heroic ‘Women Who Resisted’ and I am grateful to be able to pay tribute in this follow-up article to Sarah as well as Renia.
Renia eventually managed to escape from Poland, arriving in Haifa in March 1944 via Turkey and was hence able to write her book, the English version of which is published by the United States Holocaust Museum in conjunction with Excelsior Editions-State University of New York Press.
Post -War Renia married, had children and grandchildren and died in Haifa in 2014.
That my friend Irving from my University days in the mid-1960s was related to a Kukielka sister featured in Kate’s show was an amazing coincidence. But there is a second coincidence. While working with fellow- founder of ‘Chichester Marks Holocaust Memorial Day’ , Ralph Apel on the Charity’s Holocaust Opera projects such as ‘ Last Train to Tomorrow’ (2016) and ‘Push’ (2018), I discovered that Ralph’s father , like Irving’s, had also escaped from Poland and Russia with ‘Ander’s Army’ and what is more they both ended up in the same unit in Scotland in 1944!
When Irving was over from the USA in 2019, the three of us had lunch together at Victoria Station. It then emerged that their two fathers-who almost certainly would have known each other, took part in the little-known 1944 Polish ‘Mutiny’ in London-where all participants were fully pardoned by Winston Churchill. The two Polish soldiers, along with their comrades, were split up and dispersed among British Forces where they went on to serve with distinction-with Ralph’s father taking part in the D-Day Landings 80 years ago. The so-called ‘Mutiny ‘ is a fascinating story which I will leave to Ralph to tell…………
Martyn Bell June 2024
