80 years ago, on 4 January 1943 in Athens, the Germans executed Jerzy Ivanov-Szajnowicz. Before 1939, he was an outstanding athlete. During the Second World War, he was one of the best agents of the Allied secret services.

Jerzy Ivanov-Szajnowicz was born in Warsaw on 14 December 1911 as the son of Leonarda Szajnowicz and Russian colonel Vladimir Ivanov. He was brought up according to a patriotic ideal by his mother, who after her divorce married a Greek businessman. Young George joined his mother in 1925 and settled in Thessaloniki. Here he attended the local high school. He did not find learning difficult and had linguistic abilities. At the same time, he developed his outstanding sporting skills. He played football at the local Iraklis, but swimming and playing water polo were his greatest passions. After passing his high school leaving exams, he left for Belgium, where he first started to study diplomacy, but abandoned it for agronomy. During his studies he came to Poland and became a player of the Academic Sports Association (AZS) Warsaw in waterball. With the club he became national champion and made his debut in the Polish national team.

The outbreak of World War II left him in Greece, where he became involved in helping the Polish military mission in Thessaloniki to transfer Polish soldiers to France, escaping from internment camps in Romania and Hungary. After the German aggression against Greece in April 1941, Ivanov-Szajnowicz, made his way to Palestine, where he joined the ranks of the Polish Podkarpacie Independent Rifle Brigade. From there, he was sent to an intelligence course in Alexandria. Because of the greater possibilities of use, Polish intelligence transferred him to the British services. In October 1941, as already an English agent with the code name “033 B”, he was transferred to occupied Greece. There he organised a group that carried out intelligence and diversionary work. The occupying forces set a reward of half a million drachmas for his capture.

Szajnowicz was arrested three times by the Germans and Italians. Twice he fortunately managed to escape. Unfortunately, after his capture in September 1942, he was brought before a German court, which sentenced him to three times the death penalty. While he was being led to his execution on 4 January 1943, he made yet another escape attempt. During it he was shot. According to accounts, before his death he was said to have shouted “Long live Greece, long live Poland”.