https://www2.polskieradio.pl/eo/dokument.aspx?iid=41472
The Polish refugee, the British aristocrat and MI5
05.01.2007
WW II documents released by MI5 this week reveal a Polish refugee seductress who beguiled the British aristocracy, but worried the hell out of the Secret Services.
Letter from Poland
By Peter Gentle
05.09.06
The story involves an arms dealer supplying the republican side of the Spanish civil war, a down on his luck alcoholic British aristocrat, and even the future prime minister of Britain, Anthony Eden.
All of whom appear to have had become besotted by Manci Maria Malvina Gertler, a Jewish - Polish refugee who arrived in London in 1935.
Poland, like many other central European countries in those dark days, was becoming increasingly uncomfortable for Jews and London was seen as a good place to relocate.
Once in the UK capital it looks like she had a wail of a time, partying 24/7. And these were not any old parties – her chosen circle of friends included many of the cream de le cream of British high society.
In fact, in no time at all the extremely flirtatious Malvina seems to have persuaded one Mowbray Henry Gordon Howard, the 6th Earl of Effingham no less, to marry her.
In 1938 she duly became Lady Howard, much to the consternation of the 6th Earl of Effingham’s friends and, we now know, the British secret services.
MI5 first got wind of the future Lady Howard when she failed to properly register her ‘alien status’ with the British Home Office. When agents dug around a bit they found out that she was having an affair with a well-known gun runner called Edward Weisblatt, who was selling arms to fuel the Spanish civil war against Franco’s forces.
After Malvina married her British aristocrat she continued her affair with Wiesblatt. In fact, it was obvious to people who knew the couple that the marriage was a ‘marriage of convenience’.
Malvina married the Earl because she needed British citizenship. The Earl, who was described as a man who had drunk all his inherited money away, badly needed a shot of cash as much as he needed a shot of whiskey, and Wiesblatt, the arms dealer, gladly provided him with the funds.
But Malvina’s behaviour was attracting unwanted attention. The MI5 files, released this week to the British National Archives, has an account of her character given by one of her drunken aristocratic husband’s friends, Lord Cottenham.
The obviously extremely pompous Lord Cottenham told secret service agents that the now Lady Howard was, “Not an unattractive gipsy type; highly sexed, I should say…with an accent more foreign than it need be."
But after the war broke out in 1939, Malvina Gertler, now Lady Howard, was separated from her gun running lover, Wiesblatt – she in London, he in France. She spent much of the war trying to get exit documents to be able to meet up with him, but to no avail.
Separated from her true desires she seems to have spent her time making friends in high circles. One friend was Minister of War, Anthony Eden - the man who would later go on as prime minister to lead Britain into the disastrous Suez Canal Crisis of 1956. MI5 warned Eden about Malvina’s dubious friends and their friendship ended.
The secret services were so worried about her activities that Lady Howard was eventually interned in Holloway Prison in London in February 1941.
The Advisory Committee on Internment recommended her release, however, much to the dismay of the Security Service.
Finding out more about this mysterious sex kitten who seems to have ravished half of the posher side of wartime London - is difficult.
She first appears in the British Archives as ‘Malvina Bertler’ in a brief paper released by MI5 in 2005. The short note mentions her sculleries behaviour had attracted the attention of the authorities, but says little else apart from that she was Hungarian. In the papers released this week she is described as ‘Polish’.
I think the mistake is understandable. What we do know is that she was the daughter of Ferenz Joseph Gertler. Gertler was quite a common name among Jews living in the south of Poland, in an area between Krakow and Przemysl. When Poland was partitioned by the three empires of Prussia, Russia and Austro-Hungary for around a century and a half up until 1918, the area where the Gertler family came from was in the Austro-Hungarian section. And as Poland didn’t exist when her father was born, Hungarian was his nationality.
What happened to her in Poland up until 1935 is not known – though maybe the MI5 files hold a clue somewhere. But she was obviously an ambitious, adventurous type, so her 27 years in Poland would make a great first real in the movie that really should be made of this woman’s life.
Meanwhile, back in London, the marriage of the Earl of Effingham and our Polish seductress eventually ended in divorce in October 1945 – and the MI5 files follow Lady Howard’s progress as she travelled the world, still enchanting and seducing her way through diplomatic circles, until eventually she reached Australia.
And that’s where the trail goes cold. Heaven knows what she got up to ‘down under’ but if it was anything like the chaos she caused when she was in London then many an Australian male has an interesting, maybe heartbreaking, maybe bank balance breaking, story to tell.