Sophie Moss

Sophie Moss (Countess Zofia Roza Maria Jadwiga Elzbieta Katarzyna Aniela Tarnowska, 16 March 1917 - 22 November 2009), founded the Cairo Branch of the Polish Red Cross at the request of General Władysław Eugeniusz Sikorski.

She was born, in the throes of the First World War, in Rudnik nad Sanem, a forested estate near Tarnobrzeg, a town in south-eastern Poland founded by her Tarnowski family in 1593. She was the granddaughter of Count Stanislaw Tarnowski (1837–1917), Professor and Rector at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow (his home, the Szlak, in the past having been the resting place of deceased Polish kings on the night before burial at Wawel), and direct descendant of Catherine the Great of Russia. Her family had held some of the highest offices in Poland.

She spent her childhood roaming the freedom of the wide open spaces, the farms and the forests of the estate.

In 1937, she married Andrew Tarnowski, a member of the senior branch of the family. Her first son was under two when he died (on the day she gave birth to her second) in July 1939.

At the outbreak of war, relentless bombing forced Tarnowska and her husband to leave their home. As a gesture of commitment never to leave Polish soil, she burnt her passport. Sadly, events forced a different outcome. Tarnowska and her companions, including her brother, determined to join the front-line troops' bid to expel the German army from Polish soil; for a fortnight they criss-crossed Poland by car, in this vain attempt, finally forced to cross the border into Romania, reaching Bucharest. As sympathy for the Nazi cause grew in Bucharest, they decided to leave and head for Belgrade. The Serbs made them welcome. They travelled through the Balkans, where her baby died. They travelled on, ending up in Palestine, where her marriage broke down.

Separated from her husband, she left Palestine and travelled to Cairo where she and her sister-in-law were looked after by Prince Youssef Kamal ed-Dine (a visitor to Poland before the War) and made welcome by all. She began working for the International Red Cross, tracing missing Allied soldiers. General Sikorski, the Polish Prime Minister-in-Exile and Commander-in-Chief visited Cairo in November 1941. At his request, she set up the Cairo branch of the Polish Red Cross with the help of Lady Lampson, wife of Sir Miles Lampson, the British Ambassador and Sir Duncan Mackenzie of the British Red Cross. She became friends with King Farouk and Queen Farida.

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Wikipedia