This material is part of the author's cycle "In the Context of History: World War II and Modernity."
The article first appeared on the portal Gromada Group in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on 31 May, 2025. The original title: Графиня проти Крюгера… Як пофесорці мистецтвознавства вдалося подолати шефа гестапо…
Why do I choose the word "stunning" to define these memoir notes? Can we truly be surprised by memories of World War II after school lessons, university lectures, and old and new documentaries and feature films? Especially against the backdrop of the tragedy that we, Ukrainians, are experiencing today, striving to live righteously and resist the horrific aggression in Europe, unseen since World War II...
What is stunning is the personality of the author – a hereditary Polish aristocrat and refined intellectual. Most importantly: this fragile, yet strong woman provides us with an example of exactly this – a righteous life under tragic circumstances and tireless resistance to evil in a situation where it seems that Evil is winning.
Karolina Maria Adelaide Franciszka Ksawera Małgorzata Edina, Countess Lanckorońska of Brzezie of the Zadora coat of arms (1898–2002) is the author of the overwhelming "War Memoirs" (September 22, 1939–April 5, 1945), which were recently published in Ukrainian translation.
Karolina Lanckorońska described what she saw with her own eyes and what she became a participant in: the arrival of the first Soviets in Lviv in 1939, NKVD interrogations, the escape to German-occupied Kraków, her activity in the Polish resistance movement, imprisonment in the Stanisławów prison, and confrontation with the Stanisławów Gestapo chief, Krüger, a death sentence, imprisonment in Lviv and Berlin prisons, and over two dreadful years in Ravensbrück.
But above all, these memoirs are about humanity in inhuman circumstances...
Do what you must and can, and come what may! The main word here is "do." If you cannot take up arms, you can bring warm clothing and food for prisoners of war and prisoners of conscience; if you yourself become a prisoner, you can share the little you have left – a crumb of bread, care, knowledge.
During the war, Karolina joined the Polish Resistance Movement, worked as a Red Cross nurse, and prepared information in various languages about the situation in Europe and the world for the Third Sector of the Union of Armed Struggle of the Home Army in Lviv.
People with weak characters broke first, getting used to constant lies, pervasive insincerity, and mutual distrust.
The obligation to constantly and disciplinedly exert effort, to work continuously – which is the foundation of a character that must remain firm at any age – disappeared.
She was arrested by the Gestapo and sentenced to death. Yet she...
Karolina Lanckorońska, a professor at Lviv University, delivered lectures on Renaissance art from memory while in Ravensbrück.
By the way, in 1936, Karolina became the first woman at Lviv University to receive a second higher academic degree, leading to a kind of "revolution" at the time. Never before had a woman received such recognition.
Women and girls condemned to death – French, Italian, and Polish, including those who clearly realized that a gas chamber awaited them – listened to her stories about Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci with a special spiritual thirst.
And for me, as a reader of the Countess's memoirs, this became a special revelation: a soul capable of creating beauty is a divine gift granted to Man by the mysterious Universe or the Creator. And this divine gift served as a consolation for them before inevitable doom.
This allows us to understand how important it is to preserve humanity even in the worst circumstances.
"The sense of danger is a great source of strength. When the danger to one’s own person suddenly disappears, but not the danger to the Cause, nothing remains but a painful void and the humiliating depression that follows."
And then world classics come to the rescue:
It is not in the battle, or the storm, or the parting, We dream of death and oblivion, But in the hard moment of calm after torment, When all is lost, Save life's poor spark (George Byron)
But even Schiller, whom she once adored, became difficult for her to comprehend.
It seemed some barrier had grown between me and them – the German language. The language through whose mediation I had once assimilated so many cultural values today seemed stained to me.
The events of recent years dishonored it. I felt such a strong aversion to it that even self- persuasion – convincing myself that I was harming myself by narrowing my own cultural horizon – did not help.
Even while reading the book, I thought about what true aristocratic upbringing means. It is, first and foremost, endurance in any, even the most terrible, circumstances.
No matter what happened, Countess Karolina did not allow herself to cry, despair, fall into hysterics, vent emotions, or feel malice. Perhaps that is why she survived the severe trials and lived a very long life – 104 years!
What else helped her live even when she was one step away from death? The awareness of the moral strength and the truth that was on her side.
...In the first days of 1967 in London, she learned quite by chance from a newspaper that Hans Krüger (1909–1988), the former Gestapo chief in Stanisławów, had been brought to trial in Münster in Westphalia.
Krüger was charged with the murder of 24,875 people.
Mass arrests and executions began immediately after the occupation of Lviv.
The Gestapo decided to arrest professors from Lviv University according to lists. This was done on the night of July 3–4, 1941 – several dozen professors from Lviv's universities, mainly the Jan Kazimierz University (today Ivan Franko National University), as well as their family members and persons present in their apartments at the time of the arrest, were arrested.
The direct extermination of the population was carried out by special German units (Einsatzkommandos), commanded by SS-Hauptsturmführer Hans Krüger, the head of the Lviv Gestapo unit.