Warsaw, 1944. An eight-year-old girl named Róża Maria Goździewska stands in a makeshift hospital cellar, a Red Cross armband sliding down her thin arm. Around her lie wounded fighters of the Warsaw Uprising. She carries water, wipes foreheads, whispers encouragement. She is remembered now as the youngest nurse in the Polish Resistance.

Her image is haunting—and it reminds us that the Polish Resistance was not just soldiers with weapons. It was children, teachers, doctors, and parents. It was students running secret schools when education was banned, printers producing underground newspapers, and couriers smuggling intelligence across borders to London. It was ordinary people refusing to disappear, even as Nazis tried to erase their culture and Soviets deported them into oblivion.

In this episode, we walk through the Polish underground state: how it formed after the dual invasions of 1939, how leaders like Witold Pilecki, Jan Karski, and Irena Sendler risked everything, and how Anders’ exiled army carried Poland’s struggle onto foreign soil. We also trace the deeper roots of oppression—from the Pale of Settlement to Soviet labor camps—that shaped this desperate fight for survival.

And then we turn to today. Because history like this isn’t just about memory—it’s a mirror. What can Americans learn from the Polish Resistance about defending democracy when institutions fail? How can we organize, build parallel systems of truth, and exercise our constitutional rights in the face of corruption and authoritarian drift?

This isn’t a clean or romantic story. It’s bloody, tragic, and human. But it’s also a reminder: democracy survives not by permission, but by defiance.

Learn More:

* Oyneg Shabes Archive (documented by Emanuel Ringelblum’s group)

* Agent Zo: The Untold Story of Fearless WWII Resistance Fighter Elżbieta Zawacka by Clare Mulley

The gripping biography of “Agent Zo,” the only woman parachuted into occupied Poland for SOE and a pivotal voice for women’s roles in the Home Army.

* Warsaw Uprising Museum

Explore their digital archives and exhibitions for authentic photographs—including the iconic image of Róża Maria Goździewska, the eight-year-old “Little Nurse” of the Uprising.

Works Cited

Davies, Norman. Rising ’44: The Battle for Warsaw. Viking, 2003.

Eberhardt, Piotr. Ethnic Groups and Population Changes in Twentieth-Century Central-Eastern Europe: History, Data, and Analysis. M.E. Sharpe, 2003.

Karski, Jan. Story of a Secret State: My Report to the World. Georgetown University Press, 2013.

Korbonski, Stefan. Fighting Warsaw: The Story of the Polish Underground State, 1939–1945. Hippocrene Books, 2004.

Mazower, Mark. Hitler’s Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe. Penguin Press, 2008.

Pilecki, Witold. The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery. Edited by Marco Patricelli, translated by Jarek Garlinski, Aquila Polonica, 2012.

Piotrowski, Tadeusz. Poland’s Holocaust: Ethnic Strife, Collaboration with Occupying Forces and Genocide in the Second Republic, 1918–1947. McFarland, 1998.

Sanford, George. Katyn and the Soviet Massacre of 1940: Truth, Justice and Memory. Routledge, 2005.

Stachura, Peter D. Poland, 1918–1945: An Interpretive and Documentary History of the Second Republic. Routledge, 2004.

Tec, Nechama. Defiance: The Bielski Partisans. Oxford University Press, 1993.

Weiner, Amir. Making Sense of War: The Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution. Princeton University Press, 2001.

Zamoyski, Adam. The Forgotten Few: The Polish Air Force in the Second World War. John Murray, 1995.Muzeum Powstania Warszawskiego (Warsaw Uprising Museum). “Róża Maria Goździewska.” Archival Photograph, 1944.

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