Skarbek was appointed OBE, gazetted in the London Gazette on 25 May 1945, honoring her wartime service as a special agent for Britain.
On 25 May 1945, Krystyna Skarbek's appointment as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) was formally gazetted in the London Gazette, recognizing her extensive and dangerous wartime service as a British secret agent.
This honor capped nearly six years of covert work that took her across Hungary, occupied Poland, the Middle East, and France. As a foreign-born woman working for British intelligence, her receipt of this prestigious civilian and military honor was a notable acknowledgment by the British establishment of the indispensable role women and Allied nationals played in the shadow war against Nazi Germany.
The OBE recognized the totality of her service, from her earliest reconnaissance missions smuggling intelligence across the Tatra Mountains to her daring actions in France that saved lives and hastened the collapse of German positions in the Alps. Coming at the very end of the war in Europe, this appointment, alongside her George Medal awarded the same day, marked the formal peak of British recognition for a woman who, by the war's end, was regarded as Britain's longest-serving secret agent, male or female.