#My grandma was a Holocaust survivor — and a secret WWII spy

Enid Zentelis thought she knew everything about her grandmother, Bella Vital-Tihanyi — a Hungarian Holocaust survivor, mother of two and late-in-life avowed nudist who died in 1998.

“She was my rock,” said Zentelis, who traveled the world with Bella and even lived with her for a time.

Zentelis believed that Bella, born in 1915, had a straightforward war story. A neighbor turned in Bella as a Jew, and she spent several months in a Budapest prison. She survived the Nazi regime thanks to fake papers claiming she was a Swedish citizen waiting to go home.

But Zentelis’ view changed in 2017 when the filmmaker and NYU professor, now 49, was going through her grandmother’s effects and came across a letter dated November 1945. It was from the wartime Allied Control Commission, thanking Bella for her “highly confidential work … at great risk to yourself” for British Special Operations. Zentelis couldn’t believe her eyes.

“Had my grandmother been a spy? I needed to know what this letter meant,” said Zentelis, who went on a global investigation into her grandmother’s past — a four-year odyssey that led to the podcast “How My Grandmother Won WWII,” which concluded this week.

Zentelis was able to corroborate Bella’s role during a visit to the British National Archives in London. “I found her name on the list of collaborators and helpers for British SOE,” she said of the Special Operations Executive, a secret organization that conducted espionage. “It was the most exhilarating moment.” Through WWII expert interviews, government archives, distant relatives’ memories and Bella’s unpublished memoir, Zentelis pieced together the secret parts of her grandmother’s life.

The young woman had qualified for the 1936 Berlin Olympics with the Hungarian swim team, but her parents refused to let her go to Germany. College was out of the question for a Hungarian Jew. But her older brother, Zoltan, worked as a postal clerk — and he and Bella established a way to intercept critical intelligence and pass it to Britain’s MI6 secret intelligence service.

Zoltan tracked German positions from the post office, where — according to historians — he likely ­intercepted audio telegrams.

“He would acquire the information and [Bella] would code,” said Zentelis, adding that the siblings shared a childhood code they likely used, before Bella would then decode the intelligence for the British Legation in Budapest.

In 1940, the siblings gathered information that Hitler was going to break the German-Soviet Non­aggression Pact with Stalin. “Theirs was one of a handful of intelligence tips about this at the time,” said Zentelis. “This changed the course of the war. Their intelligence was highly valued after that point.”

Still, it was scary business. Based on her memoir, written in French and unread by Zentelis for many years after her grandmother’s death, Bella feared repercussions. “She was afraid that her eyes were going to be gouged out, Zentelis said. “She was torn up about lying to her mother.”

Even more shocking than the spying was the passionate affair Zentelis uncovered.

One of Bella’s British contacts was Eric Shipton, a famous Mt. Everest mountaineer. The married Shipton was an “agricultural attache” to Hungary, though his biographer ­Peter Steele told Zentelis it was likely a cover for his intelligence work.

“Their relationship was much deeper than a wartime affair,” said Zentelis, noting that Bella’s husband, Laszlo, had been sent to a forced-labor camp and was later murdered. “Shipton helped [her] escape Hungary after the Communists realized she was … spying for the West.”

Bella and Zoltan also leveraged their work to help their younger sister, Olga. With only 800 Hungarians allowed into the US, Olga was able to get a visa. “It was currency at the time — you could get someone out of the country in return for information,” said Zentelis.

Bella fled to Belgium after the war, where she met her longtime partner. While she would visit her family in the US, the couple moved to Corsica in the ’60s and lived a rich life, swimming a “perfect crawl stroke” until her early 80s.

Zentelis said learning of Bella’s fascist-fighting role was a “gift. It helped me to understand the power of individual resistance. She survived the Holocaust, she beat Nazis … She definitely prevailed.

“I believe she helped to make this a kinder, more just world.”