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This article discusses the first public execution of a woman in occupied Europe during World War II. The content is shared solely for historical education and to commemorate the victims.

Elżbieta Zahorska – The first woman to be publicly executed in World War II

On the morning of September 22, 1939 – just three weeks after Germany invaded Poland – a 23-year-old Polish woman named Elżbieta Zahorska – nicknamed Zo – was led into the courtyard of Fort VII in the Warsaw Citadel.

She was a corporal (Plutonowa) in the 336th Battalion of the Polish Army and, after the fall of Warsaw, one of the first members of the underground resistance. She was arrested on September 19th while carrying weapons and secret documents.

After three days of torture by the Gestapo at their headquarters on Aleje Szucha, she refused to give a statement.

The Germans wanted to make an example of her. On September 22nd at 7:15 a.m., Elżbieta and a male comrade were led before a firing squad in front of thousands of Warsaw citizens who had been forced or ordered to watch. Bound to stakes, she stood ramrod straight and calm as the shots rang out. She was killed instantly.

Elżbieta Zahorska was 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, as she maintained a vital communications network for the Polish resistance movement – ​​a network the Germans could not completely dismantle. Her public execution was a calculated act by the Nazis intended to terrorize the population, but ultimately it made her a martyr and strengthened the will to resist.

After the war, streets and schools throughout Poland were named after her. A memorial plaque at the exact spot where she fell – now part of the Warsaw Uprising Museum – commemorates the sacrifice of Elżbieta Zahorska, the first woman to give her life for a free Poland.

We tell her story today to honor 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 their nation’s darkest years.

Official sources:

Museum of the Warsaw Uprising

Władysław Bartoszewski, “Warschauer Todesring 1939–1944”

Gestapo files Warsaw 1939 – Institute of National Remembrance (IPN)