Wiera Gran
Wiera Gran, real name Dwojra Grynberg (born April 20, 1916, died November 19, 2007) was a Polish singer and actress. She is one of the most controversial people when it comes to establishing her cooperation with Germany or not.
After the war, she was accused of collaborating with the Gestapo after leaving the ghetto. She personally reported to the prosecutor’s office, wanting to clear herself of the charges. She was in custody from April 30, 1945. After two weeks, she was released due to “no crime evidence”. In October 1945, the case was examined by the Central Court of the Second Instance of the Union of Polish Stage Artists and ruled that “the behavior of Wiera Gran-Jezierska during the German occupation was flawless”. In 1946, the Verification Commission for Musicians stated that Wiera Gran “did not offend the Polish honor in any way” and that she had the right to practice. From December 1946, the case was dealt with by the Civic Honorary Court at the Central Committee of Polish Jews, which also found her innocent. In the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, there is a statement made in Tel Aviv in 1971 by an unknown (unidentified) person alleging that Wiera Gran collaborated with the Gestapo in the ghetto.
Irena Sendlerowa (a Polish humanitarian, social worker, and nurse, head of the children’s section of Żegota – the Polish Council to Aid Jews, Righteous Among the Nations) describes her knowledge about Wiera Gran in a statement to the Jewish Historical Institute in 1983. She writes in it, inter alia, that Gran appeared on the so-called “Aryan side” in the Mocca café, working for the Gestapo. Antoni Marianowicz (a witness of her presence in the ghetto) writes – I consider the accusations against Gran to be embarrassing idiocy. Wiera Gran was the ghetto’s most popular singer and I never heard a bad word about her. On the contrary, she was known for her helpfulness and philanthropy. I consider the claims that she had mixed up with Jewish Gestapo men as unjustified. ” Marianowicz believes that “the accusations can only be about personal animosities and simple envy.” Joanna Szczęsna (a Polish journalist, reporter and writer, activist of the democratic opposition in the communistic Polish People Republic period) takes a similar position, showing that the accusations against Gran were based on rumors and slander. In the documentation of the trial before the Civil Court, there are statements of various witnesses that the accusations against Gran are “insinuations and nonsense”.
Szczęsna also believes that Wiera Gran could be mistaken for Franciszka Mann. Both were subject to UB investigations, were regularly interrogated, and the Secret Police knew Gran only from her voice.
According to Marek Edelman‘s account, Gran, after leaving the ghetto, in “Aryan” Warsaw lured Jews out of their hiding places, under the pretext that she would arrange a way out to Uruguay for them. It was the so-called Action “Hotel Polski“. For these actions, the underground sentenced her to death. However, they failed to execute the sentence, because they were unable to track herdown.
Some historians, however, believe that Edelman’s accusations were based on personal opinion and rumors, not on facts. According to Szczęsna, Marek Edelman later tried to rehabilitate the memory of Wiera Gran, although in her article she did not mention how he proceeded his rehabilitation. In turn, Edelman mentions in his diary that Wiera Gran informed him about the possibility of a deportation action in the ghetto.
It was commonly said in Warsaw that Wiera Gran was a Gestapo agent, and her task was to track Jews and the underground. People were afraid of her. I know that the Home Army sentenced her to death by an underground court sentence, but the sentence was not carried out because it was not known where she lives – said one of the leaders of the ghetto uprising. He also said that in 1943 she was seen driving in an open car to a restaurant accompanied by Gestapo men. He asked how was it possible that she left the ghetto so easily? Why didn’t she pull out her mother and sisters? What made her untouchable, even though people in Babice knew she was Jewish?
The underground did not manage to execute her death sentence, and after the war her husband, Kazimierz Jezierski, an UB – communistic Secret Service – officer, who signed the sentences on Witold Pilecki (polish hero, who infiltrated Auschwitz camp to reveal it’s operation to the world), he protected her and later arranged a passport for her and helped her escape from Poland.