In 1946, Pope Pius XII prepared to honor a group of young Polish women who had become symbols of resistance and courage during World War II. They were the famous Oberlangen Girls – decorated resistance fighters who had survived Nazi imprisonment as prisoners of war. Fifteen of these celebrated women were selected to receive papal recognition.
Among them stood a twelve-year-old in Polish military uniform, the smallest and youngest of the group. Her comrades had signed the back of her Vatican photograph – their names inscribed in friendship, their signatures proof of sisterhood forged in war.
The Oberlangen Girls at St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City, 1946. Among these celebrated Polish Catholic resistance fighters stands twelve-year-old Edna (Stefcia), the youngest and smallest. None of them knew she was Jewish. (From Edna’s personal collection)
Pope Pius XII would bless her. He would award her a medal. He would praise her as an exemplary young Catholic hero.
He had no idea she was Jewish.
And neither did any of the Oberlangen Girls whose signatures covered the back of her treasured photograph.
The Oberlangen Girls: Poland’s Celebrated Heroes
The Oberlangen Girls were legendary. After the Warsaw Uprising was crushed in October 1944, thousands of Polish resistance fighters were taken as prisoners of war. Among them were young women who had fought with the Armia Krajowa (Polish Home Army) – girls who had run messages through sniper fire, tended to wounded soldiers, carried weapons, and risked their lives for Poland’s freedom.
These young women were sent to Oberlangen, a German POW camp, where they were held until liberation in 1945. By the time they were freed, they had become famous throughout the Polish exile community. They were celebrated as symbols of Polish courage, Catholic devotion, and the indomitable spirit of resistance.
In 1946, these women found themselves in transition camps in Italy, waiting to learn where they would be resettled. Polish military authorities decided to honor fifteen of the most exemplary among them with a papal audience. They would travel to Vatican City, meet Pope Pius XII, and receive his personal blessing and a medal.
Among the fifteen selected was the youngest: a twelve-year-old named Stefcia Skołkowska. Her comrades knew her as “KAJTEK” – her resistance code name. They knew she had received two military decorations at age ten, making her the youngest decorated soldier in Polish military history. They knew she had been wounded by a grenade during the Warsaw Uprising. They knew she was brave, resilient, and devoted.
What they didn’t know was that her real name was Edna Szurek, and she was Jewish.
The Girl Hidden in Plain Sight
Born in 1934 in Warsaw, Edna had witnessed the creation of the Warsaw Ghetto, watched her mother starve to death, and seen her family deported to Treblinka. At age seven, she and her sister Miriam escaped to the Aryan side of Warsaw, assuming the identities of dead Catholic girls from a cemetery: Stefcia and Marysia Skołkowska.
The transformation had to be perfect. They learned Catholic prayers. They attended mass.
They became, in every visible way, Polish Catholic orphans. When Edna joined the Polish Home Army at age nine, she did so as Stefcia, as KAJTEK, as a Catholic child fighting for Poland.
Her disguise was so complete, so utterly convincing, that it fooled not just Nazi officers but her fellow resistance fighters. The Oberlangen Girls who became her sisters-in-arms, who fought alongside her, who survived imprisonment with her, who signed the back of her Vatican photograph – none of them knew.
She was one of them. A celebrated Polish Catholic war hero. Part of a famous, legendary group.
And she carried her Jewish identity as the most dangerous secret imaginable.
Pope Pius XII and the Question That Defines His Legacy
Eugenio Pacelli became Pope Pius XII in March 1939, just months before Nazi Germany invaded Poland. His papacy would be forever defined by one question: What did he do for the Jews during the Holocaust?
For decades, historians have debated his silence. While the Pope made diplomatic protests through back channels and the Catholic Church sheltered some Jews in convents and monasteries, Pius XII never publicly condemned the systematic murder of six million Jews. Critics argue he chose neutrality and institutional preservation over moral clarity. Defenders claim he worked behind the scenes, that a public denunciation would have endangered Catholics and made matters worse.
In 2020, Pope Francis opened the Vatican Secret Archives covering Pope Pius XII’s wartime papacy. Historians worldwide have been studying these documents, searching for answers to questions that have haunted his legacy for eight decades. Did he do enough? Could he have done more? Why his public silence?
The archives have revealed complex diplomatic maneuvering, evidence of some behind-the-scenes efforts, and documentation that has satisfied neither his defenders nor his critics. The debate continues, more intense than ever.
But no document in those archives captures what happened in 1946, when Pope Pius XII sat upon his golden throne preparing to honor fifteen young Polish women.
Among them stood a Jewish child. And no one knew.
At the Vatican: The Photographs That Tell Two Stories
The photograph shows them all – the Oberlangen Girls gathered at St. Peter’s Basilica, the magnificent dome rising behind them. Young women in Polish military uniforms, standing together, proud and strong. Among them, noticeably smaller than the others, stands little Stefcia.
Another photograph captures just two girls at the Vatican – Edna and one of her comrades, both in uniform, St. Peter’s dome towering behind them. Edna looks so young, so small. A twelve-year-old among teenagers and young women. The youngest decorated soldier in Polish military history. A Jewish child disguised as a Catholic hero.
Edna (left) with a fellow Oberlangen Girl at St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City, 1946. At twelve years old, she was the youngest decorated soldier in Polish military history—and the only Jewish child among them. (From Edna’s personal collection)
On the back of one photograph, signatures cover every available space. Her fellow Oberlangen Girls signed their names, inscribing their friendship, their shared experience, their bond as sisters who had survived war together. These signatures would remain with Edna for the rest of her life – proof of a sisterhood built on a foundation of deception she could never reveal.
The Moment of Blessing
When Edna’s name was called, she crossed the vast Vatican reception room on trembling legs. The twelve-year-old girl in her Polish Home Army uniform approached the Pope’s golden throne. The colorful Swiss Guards stood at attention. The room glittered with sacred art and architectural splendor. Her fellow Oberlangen Girls watched.
Pope Pius XII made the sign of the cross over her. He spoke in both Italian and Polish: “May the Lord bless you for your bravery and may the world know peace from your courage and strength.”
“Thank you, Your Holiness,” Edna responded, her voice quavering.
He motioned for her to rise. A priest extended a small medal toward her, shaped like a cross. Pride swelled within Edna as she accepted this ultimate validation of the Catholic identity she had assumed to survive.
Pope Pius XII saw a brave young Catholic girl, the youngest of the celebrated Oberlangen Girls, who had served Poland with extraordinary distinction. He blessed her. He honored her. He praised her courage.
He never knew he was blessing a Jewish resistance fighter.
And the Oberlangen Girls standing beside her – these women whose signatures adorned her photograph, these sisters-in-arms who had fought alongside her, suffered with her, survived with her – they didn’t know either.
The Deepest Irony
This moment crystallizes multiple layers of tragic irony. Pope Pius XII, whose silence on the Holocaust remains one of history’s most debated questions, blessed a Jewish child who had survived the very genocide he declined to publicly condemn. He honored her as an exemplary Catholic, never knowing that the Catholic identity he blessed was a disguise created to escape extermination.
But there’s a deeper irony still: Edna’s own comrades, the Oberlangen Girls who became her sisters, who signed her photograph, who shared her experience of resistance and imprisonment – they were fooled too. Her transformation was so complete that it convinced not just Nazi officers and the Pope, but the very women who knew her best.
These young Polish women, celebrated throughout the exile community as heroes of Catholic Poland, included among their number a Jewish girl who had perfected her disguise so thoroughly that even living, fighting, and suffering alongside them for years never revealed the truth.
Edna survived precisely because she could pass as Catholic. The very identity that the Church represented, the faith that Pope Pius XII embodied, the devotion that the Oberlangen Girls exemplified – this became her shield against extermination. She learned the prayers. She attended mass. She fought for Poland. She became, in every visible way, one of them.
And in 1946, the Pope blessed her for it. Her comrades celebrated with her. And no one knew.
A Secret Act of Defiance
As the ceremony continued and other Oberlangen Girls were called forward to receive their honors, Edna drifted toward the rear of the group. Her eyes wandered over the ornate details of the room. Then, seized by a sudden impulse, she pulled a small penknife from her pocket.
With Pope Pius XII mere feet away, with all attention focused on the ceremony, with her fellow Oberlangen Girls receiving their blessings, Edna carved “KAJTEK” into the door molding.
It was a childish act. Or perhaps it was something more: a desperate need to leave some mark of her true self in this hallowed place where she was being honored for a persona that wasn’t entirely her own. In a room where she was celebrated as a Catholic hero, where she stood among celebrated Catholic heroes, she inscribed her resistance code name – a whisper of the Jewish child who survived by becoming someone else.
The Pope never saw it. The Oberlangen Girls never saw it. But it was there, carved into the Vatican itself – KAJTEK, the code name of a Jewish child who fooled everyone.
What This Moment Reveals
As historians continue to debate Pope Pius XII’s wartime conduct, as the Vatican archives are studied and analyzed, as scholars argue over what he did and didn’t do for the Jews during the Holocaust, Edna’s story adds a dimension that no archive can capture.
Pope Pius XII blessed a Jewish child without knowing it. A girl whose family had been murdered in the genocide that occurred during his papacy received his personal commendation. The ultimate symbol of Catholic authority honored a Jewish resistance fighter who had survived by mastering Catholic identity so completely that she was selected as one of Poland’s most exemplary young Catholic heroes.
Her fellow Oberlangen Girls – these celebrated women whose names are signed on the back of her Vatican photograph, these sisters who fought beside her – they didn’t know either. The photograph they all signed became a record of an extraordinary deception. Every signature represented another person she had fooled, another relationship built on a foundation of necessary lies, another friend who could never know the truth.
What would Pope Pius XII have done if he had known? What would the Oberlangen Girls have done? Would the Pope have blessed her still? Would her comrades have signed her photograph? Would it have changed anything?
We will never know.
The Photographs That Remain
The photographs survived. Edna kept them her entire life. The Oberlangen Girls at St. Peter’s Basilica, young and proud in their uniforms. Edna at the Vatican with her comrade, St. Peter’s dome rising behind them. And on the back, all those signatures – names of women who never knew that one of their own, one of the celebrated Oberlangen Girls, was Jewish.
These photographs tell two stories. On the surface: young Polish Catholic war heroes being honored by the Pope, celebrated as symbols of faith and courage. Hidden beneath: a Jewish child who survived by becoming invisible, who was so successful in her transformation that she received the highest honors the Catholic Church and the Polish military could offer.
The photographs document both a triumph and a tragedy. Edna’s survival was miraculous. Her courage was extraordinary. Her transformation was complete. But to achieve this, she had to disappear. To be honored, she had to hide. To receive the Pope’s blessing and her comrades’ signatures, she had to deny the very identity that made her survival so miraculous.
The Secret Kept
Edna carried this secret for decades. Pope Pius XII died in 1958, never learning that one of the young Oberlangen Girls he had personally honored was Jewish. The Vatican never knew. The Polish military authorities never knew. And the Oberlangen Girls whose signatures covered the back of her photograph – these women who had become her sisters-in-arms – they never knew either.
This moment, one of the most extraordinary ironies of World War II, remained hidden. A Jewish child standing before the Pope who declined to publicly condemn the Holocaust. A survivor blessed by the institution that had, at best, offered limited shelter and maintained, at worst, a silence that many would never forgive. A Jewish girl celebrated alongside Catholic heroes, her true identity invisible even to those who knew her best.
When Edna stood at the Vatican, when she received that papal medal, when her fellow Oberlangen Girls signed the back of her photograph, what went through her mind? Did she think of her mother, starved to death in the ghetto? Her siblings, murdered at Treblinka? Did she feel the weight of representing all the Jewish children who had not survived to receive anyone’s blessing?
Or was she simply a twelve-year-old girl, proud of her medals, grateful for the friendship of her fellow Oberlangen Girls, relieved to have survived, still living the Catholic identity that had saved her life?
The Answer the Archives Cannot Provide
Historians continue to study the Vatican archives. They analyze diplomatic cables, examine policy decisions, debate what Pope Pius XII knew and when he knew it, argue over what he could have done differently. These are important questions that deserve serious examination.
But no archive contains the full truth of that moment in 1946. No document captures what it meant for a Jewish child to stand among the Oberlangen Girls, to receive papal blessing, to have her Catholic comrades sign her photograph, all while carrying a secret that could never be revealed.
Pope Pius XII blessed Jewish courage without recognizing it. He honored Jewish resistance without seeing it. He commended Jewish survival while it stood disguised before him, hidden among a group of celebrated Polish Catholic heroes.
The Oberlangen Girls, legendary throughout the Polish exile community, included a Jewish child among their number and never knew. They fought beside her, suffered with her, were imprisoned with her, were liberated with her, traveled to the Vatican with her, and signed her photograph in friendship and sisterhood – and never knew.
Edna’s transformation was so complete that even the Pope himself and even her closest comrades could not see through it. She had become the Catholic child she pretended to be so thoroughly that she received the highest recognition both the Catholic Church and the Polish military could offer.
This is both a testament to her extraordinary strength and a tragedy of invisibility. To survive, she had to disappear. To be honored as one of the Oberlangen Girls, she had to hide. To receive the Pope’s blessing and her comrades’ signatures, she had to deny the very identity that made her survival so miraculous.
Pope Pius XII blessed a Jewish child in 1946. But he blessed her as a Catholic, as one of the celebrated Oberlangen Girls, as an exemplary young hero of Poland. And that makes all the difference.
The photographs remain – proof of a moment when history’s greatest irony stood hidden in plain sight at the Vatican, surrounded by those who loved her and never knew her truth.
From the memoir “Little Edna’s War” by Janet Bond Brill, PhD, releasing January 27, 2026, International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
