Krystyna Nowak was born 1921 in Warsaw. Before the war she was a student of medicine at Warsaw University, one of the first women admitted to the program. She joined the ZWZ (Union of Armed Struggle) in 1940, became a Home Army courier in 1942, smuggling documents and messages across Occupied Poland. During the Warsaw Uprising she served as both a medic and a front-line fighter in the Wola district.
Smuggled out of burning Warsaw by a Home Army courier, this letter was written by a young medic to her brother, a POW in Germany. It would not reach him until after the war.