The Goddess of Warsaw

The Goddess of Warsaw (2024) is a novel by Lisa Barr. The story follows Lena Browning, a wealthy and famous Hollywood star with a secret past as a Jewish assassin who survived the Holocaust. Lena continues to seek revenge on all those who wronged her and her family. The Goddess of Warsaw explores themes of Resistance and Survival in the Face of Oppression, The Conflation of Justice and Revenge, and The Complexities of Identity. Barr’s other works include Woman on Fire (2022), The Unbreakables (2019), and the award-winning Fugitive Colors (2012).

This guide refers to the 2024 HarperCollins Kindle edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide discuss war and violence, death and murder, the Holocaust and antisemitism, anti-gay bias and violence, miscarriage, suicide, and sexual exploitation.

Plot Summary

In the Prologue, wealthy and famous Hollywood actress Lena Browning meets with a young starlet named Sienna Hayes, whom Lena has handpicked to direct her biopic. Lena begins narrating the truth about her past to Sienna.

In 1943 Warsaw, Sabina “Bina” Blonski, a Jewish woman trapped in the ghetto, utilizes her pale skin and light hair to smuggle resources into the ghetto for the rest of her community, to the displeasure of her husband, Jakub. Jakub is a member of the Oyneg Shabbos Archives and denounces violent resistance. Disregarding this, Bina secretly joins the ZOB (which stands for Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa, meaning “Jewish Fighting Organization”), partly because she is also secretly in love with Jakub’s brother, Aleksander, who is also a member. Zelda, the leader of the resistance fighters, tasks Bina with killing those who have betrayed their Jewish brethren. Bina does so successfully, after which her death is feigned and she is smuggled into a safe house on the Aryan side.

On Zelda’s orders, Bina meets with the leader of the Polish resistance organization, Żegota. The leader, who goes by the code name “Motyl,” turns out to be Bina’s close friend, Stanislaw “Stach Nowak” Sobieski. Stach and Bina were actors together before the Nazi occupation. Stach’s father, Baron Konrad Sobieski, was the one responsible for killing Bina’s father and throwing the rest of her family into the ghetto. The baron also eventually killed Stach’s lover, a fellow actor named Mateusz, leading Stach to work underground to topple his father’s Nazi operation. Stach agrees to provide weaponry and arms for the ZOB’s efforts to revolt against the Nazis.

Aleksander arrives at the safe house with news that the Nazis retaliated against him and Jakub for Bina’s work in the ghetto. While Aleksander managed to escape, Jakub was put on a train to the Treblinka extermination camp. Believing that Jakub is dead, Bina and Aleksander confess their love for each other and decide to sleep together just one time; Bina writes down the details of their encounter so as to never forget those moments.

Zelda sends Bina fresh orders: 94 young girls are being held hostage in the Great Synagogue to be sexually exploited the Nazis, and Bina is to get in and deliver them a way to die by suicide. With Stach’s help, Bina manages to get in and give the girls cyanide tablets. However, at the request of one of the ZOB members, Eryk Behrman, Bina also plans for one of the girls’ lives to be saved: Eryk’s younger sister, Dina. Days after the synagogue incident, however, someone from within Żegota betrays them—the headquarters are set on fire, and Stach is dragged out and taken away.

Bina and Anna, one of the surviving Żegota members, carry on with Stach’s final mission. Aided by Lukas, a secretly gay Nazi who was Stach’s lover and plant on the other side, the women bomb a Nazi-frequented cabaret and personally kill the baron. Before he dies, however, the baron reveals that Bina is his biological daughter: Bina’s mother had a longstanding affair with him.

Bina manages to make her way back into the ghetto. To her shock, she discovers that Jakub managed to escape Treblinka and has returned. Everyone prepares to fight, and when Nazi forces enter the ghetto on Hitler’s birthday, they are met with gunfire and bombs. Just as the Jewish fighters celebrate the Nazis’ retreat at the end of the first day, Bina and her unit are ambushed by Lukas and his troops, revealing Lukas as the Żegota traitor. He reveals Bina’s true parentage and her affair with Aleksander to the other fighters, and then he kills Jakub. Lukas and his troops are eventually vanquished, but not before they kill Zelda. The others are furious at Bina’s deception; ashamed and heartbroken, Bina leaves the ghetto.

Bina eventually makes it out of Warsaw to Germany and eventually America. She adopts a new identity as Lena Browning and makes it big in Hollywood. Simultaneously, she also hunts down and kills Nazis who are hiding in the country. However, Lukas’s brother, Michael Müller, finds her and attempts to blackmail her into making a Nazi propaganda movie. While Lena and her close friend and director, Stan Moss, pretend to acquiesce, they hatch a plan to destroy Müller for good. They engineer an explosion that ends up killing Müller and his associates, disguised as a terrible on-set accident. Stan and Lena make a movie immediately after that is exceptionally well received. They go on to become two of the most wealthy and powerful people in Hollywood.

Lena and Sienna grow close while working together on the movie. One day, Sienna reveals to Lena that Dina Behrman, whose life Lena attempted to save at the synagogue, is indeed alive: She is now a celebrated pianist named Diana Mazur and will be giving a rare public performance in Warsaw. Sienna and Lena travel to Warsaw for the performance, and afterward, Lena and Dina tearfully reunite.

That same night, Lena also meets Anna again, whose real name is Petra Schneider. They discuss how Lukas escaped the war and is now a celebrated filmmaker in Argentina, living under the name Armand Arias. His most recent film is up for a number of awards. However, Lena promises Anna that Lukas will not win a single one. Lena and Sienna travel to the Vienna International Film Festival, where they plan to debut the biopic. Lukas, as Armand Arias, arrives to receive his award. Lena interrupts the ceremony and exposes his true identity in front of the world before she shoots him dead.

Lena is taken to the women’s prison in Italy after killing Lukas but lives the rest of her life with no regrets. Sienna’s biopic on Lena wins a number of Oscars, and she visits Lena regularly in prison. Eighteen months after Lena goes to prison, Aleksander visits her. He escaped the ghetto and the war and went on to marry Tosia, a fellow ZOB member, settling in Israel and raising a family there together. Aleksander thanks Lena for avenging Jakub and admits that he has been in love with her all his life. Upon realizing that their love was always true, Lena finally sheds the tears that she has not been able to since the war.