Sonia Olschanezky (25 December 1923 – 6 July 1944) was a member of the
French Resistance
The French Resistance (french: La Résistance) was a collection of organisations that fought the German occupation of France during World War II, Nazi occupation of France and the Collaborationism, collaborationist Vichy France, Vichy régim ...
and the
Special Operations Executive
The Special Operations Executive (SOE) was a secret British World War II organisation. It was officially formed on 22 July 1940 under Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton, from the amalgamation of three existing secret organisations. Its pu ...
during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
.
Olschanezky was a member of the SOE's
Juggler
Juggling is a physical skill, performed by a juggler, involving the manipulation of objects for recreation, entertainment, art or sport. The most recognizable form of juggling is toss juggling. Juggling can be the manipulation of one object o ...
circuit in
occupied France
The Military Administration in France (german: Militärverwaltung in Frankreich; french: Occupation de la France par l'Allemagne) was an interim occupation authority established by Nazi Germany during World War II to administer the occupied zo ...
where she operated as a courier until she was arrested by the
Gestapo
The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe.
The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one organi ...
and was subsequently executed at the
Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp.
Early life
![Altes und Neues Rathaus am Chemnitzer Marktplatz 2015](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/Altes_und_Neues_Rathaus_am_Chemnitzer_Marktplatz_2015.jpg)
Olschanezky was born in
Chemnitz
Chemnitz (; from 1953 to 1990: Karl-Marx-Stadt , ) is the third-largest city in the German state of Saxony after Leipzig and Dresden. It is the 28th largest city of Germany as well as the fourth largest city in the area of former East Germany a ...
, Germany.
Her father, Eli Olschanezky, was born in
Odessa
Odesa (also spelled Odessa) is the third most populous city and municipality in Ukraine and a major seaport and transport hub located in the south-west of the country, on the northwestern shore of the Black Sea. The city is also the administrativ ...
and came to Germany to study chemical engineering. He met Olschanezky's mother, Helene, at a dance given by the Jewish community in
Leipzig
Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as wel ...
. They were engaged on 1 August 1914, the day Germany declared war on Russia. Russian citizens in Germany were then subject to internment. Helene's father, a portrait painter from Minsk used his society contacts to arrange for Eli's release from internment after six months on condition that he report every week to the police station in Chemnitz. As an
enemy alien
In customary international law, an enemy alien is any native, citizen, denizen or subject of any foreign nation or government with which a domestic nation or government is in conflict and who is liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured and ...
, he was unable to work as a chemical engineer and took a job as a sales representative for a manufacturer of ladies' stockings.
In September 1916 Olschanezky's parents were married and set up house in Chemnitz where their three children were born. Enoch (25 September 191718 April 1944), Tobias (who later changed his name to Serge; March 1919) and Sonia (25 December 1923). The family lived a comfortable bourgeois life between the wars, with a chauffeur, a cook, and a governess for the children in their apartment on the Hellenenstrasse. As secular Jews, the Olschanezkys celebrated major Jewish holidays and contributed to Jewish charities including the Jewish National Fund.
![Bratianu si Magheru2](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Bratianu_si_Magheru2.jpg)
In 1926 the family left Germany for Bucharest, where Eli Olschanezky had been invited to oversee the construction of, and then run, a factory producing silk stockings. After three years his partners stopped credit and the business failed, which resulted in the family villa and possessions being sold. The family moved to Paris in January 1930 and settled into a ''pension de famille'' in the Thirteenth Arrondissement. Eli Olschanezky tried to re-establish himself in business but found himself cheated of his money, which left him sick and demoralised, and the family moved to cheaper accommodation.
Serge (formerly Tobias), then aged 15, left school and, along with his brother Enoch, got a job in a hotel.
In Paris, Olschanezky became a dance student, and when the manager of a children's theatre saw her in class one day she was asked to join the theatre company. Her parents said no at first, but she eventually won them over, and the age of 10 she began performing with Le Théâtre du Petit Monde on Thursday afternoons, the school holiday. Through the influence of a distant relative she appeared on television in a demonstration of the new medium at the 1937
International Exposition
A world's fair, also known as a universal exhibition or an expo, is a large international exhibition designed to showcase the achievements of nations. These exhibitions vary in character and are held in different parts of the world at a specif ...
in Paris. While still a schoolgirl, she was now working as a performer, appearing at school dances and private affairs, using the professional name of Sonia Olys.
Occupation and internment
![Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-126-0350-26A, Paris, Einmarsch, Parade deutscher Truppen](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Bundesarchiv_Bild_101I-126-0350-26A%2C_Paris%2C_Einmarsch%2C_Parade_deutscher_Truppen.jpg)
In May 1940, France was invaded by the German Army. After the
French surrender, the new leader,
Henri-Philippe Petain, cooperated in the
persecution of the Jews in the country.
In May 1942, orders were given for all Jewish men, women and children to wear a six-pointed yellow star on their clothing. The following month, Olschanezky was arrested and sent to the
Drancy deportation camp
Drancy internment camp was an assembly and detention camp for confining Jews who were later deported to the extermination camps during the German occupation of France during World War II. Originally conceived and built as a modernist urban comm ...
, where she waited being sent to an
extermination camp
Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (german: Vernichtungslager), also called death camps (), or killing centers (), in Central Europe during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million peoplemostly Jewsin the Holocaust. The v ...
in Nazi Germany.
Her mother contacted friends in Germany who managed to produce false papers that stated that Olschanezky had "economically valuable skills" needed for the war effort. On the production of the papers and the payment of money to a German official, Olschanezky was freed in the autumn of 1942. After her release she told her mother, that she felt she had to "do something to defend us. Others won’t do it for us. We must do it for ourselves." When her mother asked if she didn't think she had already lost enough, she replied that if everyone said that, no one would do anything. Through one of the families for whom she had worked, she met Jacques Weil, who would later become Olschanezky's fiancé, and found an opportunity to become a ''résistant''.
Special Operations Executive
Olschanezky was locally recruited by Jacques Weil to a small Jewish
Juggler
Juggling is a physical skill, performed by a juggler, involving the manipulation of objects for recreation, entertainment, art or sport. The most recognizable form of juggling is toss juggling. Juggling can be the manipulation of one object o ...
(also known as
Robin
Robin may refer to:
Animals
* Australasian robins, red-breasted songbirds of the family Petroicidae
* Many members of the subfamily Saxicolinae (Old World chats), including:
**European robin (''Erithacus rubecula'')
**Bush-robin
**Forest rob ...
) sub-circuit of SOE's
Physician
A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...
(also known as
Prosper {{wiktionary, prosper
Prosper may refer to:
__NOTOC__ Places in the United States
* Prosper, Minnesota, an unincorporated community
* Prosper, North Dakota, an unincorporated community
* Prosper, Oregon, an unincorporated community
* Prosper, Texa ...
) circuit operating near Paris. The agents of Prosper circuit included
Andrée Borrel
Andrée Raymonde Borrel (18 November 1919 – 6 July 1944), code named Denise, was a French woman who served in the French Resistance and as an agent for Britain's clandestine Special Operations Executive in World War II. The purpose of SOE was ...
(courier),
Francis Suttill
Francis Alfred Suttill DSO (born, France, 17 March 1910 – executed, c. 23 March 1945), code name Prosper, was an agent of the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) organization in World War II. Suttill was the creato ...
(organizer) and
Gilbert Norman
Gilbert Maurice Norman (7 April 1915 – 6 September 1944) was a British Army officer who served in the Special Operations Executive in France during World War II.
Norman was born in Saint-Cloud, Hauts-de-Seine, to an English father and a Fre ...
(W/T operator).
Circuits were also known as networks. Olschanezky was stationed in
Châlons-sur-Marne and spent much of her time as a courier between Châlons and their headquarters in the rue Cambon, near the Place de la Concorde, using the codename "Tania" and "Suzanne Ouvrard". The long-awaited second-front in the form of a cross-channel invasion was expected in the 1943, and sabotage was stepped up through the spring.
One action in which Olschanezky took part succeeded in blowing up a munitions train at
Melun
Melun () is a Communes of France, commune in the Seine-et-Marne Departments of France, department in the Île-de-France Regions of France, region, north-central France. It is located on the southeastern outskirts of Paris, about from the kilome ...
, on the
Seine
)
, mouth_location = Le Havre/Honfleur
, mouth_coordinates =
, mouth_elevation =
, progression =
, river_system = Seine basin
, basin_size =
, tributaries_left = Yonne, Loing, Eure, Risle
, tributarie ...
south of Paris. To her mother and brothers she never denied the danger she was in. Her brother Serge said of her, "She was not one of those who reveled in it, she just accepted it." Serge escaped from a POW camp in Germany, with Enoch working for the
Robin
Robin may refer to:
Animals
* Australasian robins, red-breasted songbirds of the family Petroicidae
* Many members of the subfamily Saxicolinae (Old World chats), including:
**European robin (''Erithacus rubecula'')
**Bush-robin
**Forest rob ...
circuit. Enoch (25 September 1917 – 18 April 1944) was murdered at
Auschwitz
Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...
; no other details are known.
Unknown to London, Olschanezky had refused to follow Weill who fled to
Bern
german: Berner(in)french: Bernois(e) it, bernese
, neighboring_municipalities = Bremgarten bei Bern, Frauenkappelen, Ittigen, Kirchlindach, Köniz, Mühleberg, Muri bei Bern, Neuenegg, Ostermundigen, Wohlen bei Bern, Zollikofen
, website ...
(
Switzerland
). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...
) in July 1943 after the arrest of the leader of Robin (Jean Alexandre Worms) following the collapse of Prosper the previous month, leaving her in charge of what was left of Robin and taking immense risks by running messages between different SOE groups that were likely compromised by this collapse.
Arrest and execution
Arrest
![Fresnes Prison 05](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/Fresnes_Prison_05.jpg)
Olschanezky remained free until her capture in January 1944 and, after being interrogated by the
Gestapo
The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe.
The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one organi ...
, was imprisoned at
Fresnes Prison
Fresnes Prison ('' French Centre pénitentiaire de Fresnes'') is the second largest prison in France, located in the town of Fresnes, Val-de-Marne, south of Paris. It comprises a large men's prison (''maison d'arrêt'') of about 1200 cells, a smal ...
. On 13 May 1944, Olschanezky together with three other captured SOE agents,
Andrée Borrel
Andrée Raymonde Borrel (18 November 1919 – 6 July 1944), code named Denise, was a French woman who served in the French Resistance and as an agent for Britain's clandestine Special Operations Executive in World War II. The purpose of SOE was ...
,
Vera Leigh
Vera Leigh (17 March 1903 – 6 July 1944) was an agent of the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive during World War II.
Leigh was a member of the SOE's Donkeyman circuit and Inventor sub-circuit in occupied France until ...
and
Diana Rowden
Diana Hope Rowden (31 January 1915 – 6 July 1944) served in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force and was an agent for the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) during World War II. Rowden was a member of SOE's SOE F Sectio ...
, were moved from Fresnes to the Gestapo's Paris headquarters at
84 Avenue Foch
84 Avenue Foch (german: Avenue Foch vierundachtzig) was the Parisian headquarters of the ''Sicherheitsdienst'' (SD), the counter-intelligence branch of the SS during the German occupation of Paris in World War II.
Avenue Foch is a wide reside ...
along with
Yolande Beekman
Yolande Elsa Maria Beekman (7 January 1911 – 13 September 1944) was a British spy in World War II who served in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force and the Special Operations Executive. She was a member of SOE's Musician circuit in occupied France ...
,
Madeleine Damerment
Madeleine Zoe Damerment (11 November 1917 – 13 September 1944) was a French spy in World War II who served in the French Resistance and Britain's Special Operations Executive. Damerment was to be a courier for SOE's Bricklayer circuit in Fran ...
,
Eliane Plewman
Éliane Sophie Plewman (6 December 1917 – 13 September 1944) was a British agent of Special Operations Executive (SOE) and member of the French Resistance working as a courier for the "MONK circuit" in occupied France during World War II. SOE' ...
and
Odette Sansom
Odette Sansom (28 April 1912 – 13 March 1995), also known as Odette Churchill and Odette Hallowes, code named Lise, was an agent for the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) in France during the Second World War. S ...
, all of whom were F Section agents. (Only Sansom would survive the war.) Later that day they were taken to the railway station, and each handcuffed to a guard on the train. Sansom, in an interview after the war, said:
We were starting on this journey together in fear, but all of us hoping for something above all that we would remain together. We had all had a taste already of what things could be like, none of us did expect for anything very much, we all knew that they could put us to death. I was the only one officially condemned to death. The others were not. But there is always a fugitive ray of hope that some miracle will take place.
The Germans transported Olschanezky and the seven other female agentsBeekman, Borrel, Damerment, Leigh, Plewman, Sansom, and Rowdento a civilian prison for women in
Karlsruhe
Karlsruhe ( , , ; South Franconian: ''Kallsruh'') is the third-largest city of the German state (''Land'') of Baden-Württemberg after its capital of Stuttgart and Mannheim, and the 22nd-largest city in the nation, with 308,436 inhabitants. ...
prison where they were placed in separate cells. The agents were treated no differently from other prisoners and were given manual work. Occasionally, they could hear Allied bombers headed for targets within Germany as the war was apparently coming to its end and the prisoners could hope to be liberated in due course. There was some confusion as to what had happened to Olschanezky as she looked similar to another agent
Noor Inayat Khan
Noor-un-Nisa Inayat Khan, GC (1 January 1914 – 13 September 1944), also known as Nora Inayat-Khan and Nora Baker, was a British resistance agent in France in World War II who served in the Special Operations Executive (SOE). The purpose of S ...
(
Cinema
Cinema may refer to:
Film
* Cinematography, the art of motion-picture photography
* Film or movie, a series of still images that create the illusion of a moving image
** Film industry, the technological and commercial institutions of filmmaking
* ...
circuit) who had also been arrested, and it was thought that Noor might have used Olschanezky's name as an alias.
Execution at Natzweiler-Struthof
![Natzweiler-Struthof Crematorium](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/Natzweiler-Struthof_Crematorium.jpg)
Some time between five and six in the morning on 6 July 1944, not quite two months after their arrival in Karlsruhe, Borrel, Leigh, Olschanezky and Rowden were taken to the reception room, given their personal possessions, and handed over to two Gestapo men who then escorted them 100 kilometres south-west by closed truck to the
Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in France, where they arrived around three-thirty in the afternoon. The women's arrival was apparently unexpected as was the order by one of the women's escorts that the four women were to be executed immediately.
As women were a rarity in the camp their presence immediately attracted attention from both German guards and prisoners. The four women were led through the center of the camp down to the cellblock at the bottom of the camp by
SS men and held there until later that night. "One could see from their appearance that they hadn't come from a camp," said a French prisoner. "They seemed young, they were fairly well groomed, their clothes were not rubbish, their hair was brushed, and each had a case in their (''sic'') hand."
The four women were initially together but later put into individual cells. Through the windows, which faced those of the infirmary, they managed to communicate with several prisoners, including a Belgian prisoner, Dr Georges Boogaerts, who passed one of the women (whom he later identified as Borrel from a photograph) cigarettes through the window. Borrel threw him a little tobacco pouch containing some money.
Albert Guérisse
Major General Count Albert-Marie Edmond Guérisse (5 April 1911 – 26 March 1989) was a Belgian Resistance member who organized French and Belgian escape routes for downed Allied pilots during World War II under the alias of Patrick Albert " ...
, a Belgian army physician who had headed the
Pat O'Leary escape line in
Marseille
Marseille ( , , ; also spelled in English as Marseilles; oc, Marselha ) is the prefecture of the French department of Bouches-du-Rhône and capital of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. Situated in the camargue region of southern Franc ...
, recognized Borrel as one of his former helpers. He exchanged a few words with another one of the women, who said she was English (Leigh or Rowden) before she disappeared into the cellblock building. At the post-war trial of the men charged with the execution of the four women, Guérisse stated that he was in the infirmary and had seen the women, one by one, being escorted by SS guards from the cellblock (Zellenbau) to the crematorium a few yards away. He told the court: "I saw the four women going to the crematorium, one after the other. One went, and two or three minutes later another went."
Inside the building housing the crematorium, each woman in turn was told to undress for a medical check and a doctor gave her an injection for what he told one of them was a vaccination against
typhus
Typhus, also known as typhus fever, is a group of infectious diseases that include epidemic typhus, scrub typhus, and murine typhus. Common symptoms include fever, headache, and a rash. Typically these begin one to two weeks after exposure.
...
, but was in fact a 10cc dose of
phenol
Phenol (also called carbolic acid) is an aromatic organic compound with the molecular formula . It is a white crystalline solid that is volatile. The molecule consists of a phenyl group () bonded to a hydroxy group (). Mildly acidic, it req ...
which the doctor believed was lethal. When the woman became unconscious after the injection, she was inserted into the crematorium oven. Guérrise said, "The next morning the German prisoner in charge of the crematorium explained to me that each time the door of the oven was opened, the flames came out of the chimney and that meant a body had been put in the oven. I saw the flames four times." The door was locked from the outside during the executions, but it was possible to see the corridor from a small window above the door, so the prisoner in the highest bunk was able to keep up a running commentary on what he saw.
The prisoner Guérisse referred to was Franz Berg, who assisted in the crematorium and had stoked the fire that night before being sent back to the room he shared with two other prisoners before the executions. Berg said:
More than one witness talked of a struggle when the fourth woman was shoved into the furnace. According to a Polish prisoner named Walter Schultz, the SS medical orderly (Emil Brüttel) told him the following: "When the last woman was halfway in the oven (she had been put in feet first), she had come to her senses and struggled. As there were sufficient men there, they were able to push her into the oven, but not before she had resisted and scratched
eterStraub's face." The next day Schultz noticed that the face of the camp executioner (Straub) had been severely scratched.
The camp doctor (
Werner Rohde) was executed after the war. Franz Berg was sentenced to five years in prison but received the death penalty in another trial for a different crime and was hanged on the same day as Rohde. The camp commandant (
Fritz Hartjenstein
Friedrich Hartjenstein (3 July 1905 – 20 October 1954) was a German SS functionary during the Nazi era. A member of the SS-Totenkopfverbände, he served at various Nazi concentration camps such as Auschwitz and Sachsenhausen. After the S ...
) received a life sentence, while Straub was sentenced to 13 years in prison.
Awards and honours
![Violette Szabo SOE agent](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Violette_Szabo_SOE_agent.jpg)
In spite of the efforts of
Vera Atkins
Vera May Atkins (15 June 1908 – 24 June 2000) was a Romanian-born British intelligence officer who worked in the France Section of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) from 1941 to 1945 during the Second World War.
Early life
Atkins was ...
(F Section's intelligence officer during the war), Olschanezky is not commemorated on the
Valençay SOE Memorial
The Valençay SOE Memorial is a monument in France to the members of the Special Operations Executive F Section who lost their lives working to liberate the country during World War II.
The memorial was unveiled in the town of Valençay, in the de ...
in the
Loire Valley, unveiled in 1991, which is dedicated to the 91 men and 13 women of F Section who were killed in action. Atkins was told by the memorial committee that Olschanezky was not eligible to be noted on the memorial as she was a locally recruited agent, not commissioned in the British armed forces. Nor was this German-born Jew honoured by the British or French governments with any medals or citations, despite her heroic exploits on behalf of these two nations.
A later memorial, the SOE Agents Memorial in
Lambeth Palace Road
The A3036 is an A road in London, England, running from Waterloo to Wandsworth.
Route
It starts at the southern tip of the County Hall roundabout where the A302 Westminster Bridge, York Road and A23 Westminster Bridge Road all intersect ...
, London, is dedicated to all SOE agents but does not list individual names, so is considered to include people like Olschanezky. Olschanezky is specifically commemorated with a plaque, along with the names of
Noor Inayat Khan
Noor-un-Nisa Inayat Khan, GC (1 January 1914 – 13 September 1944), also known as Nora Inayat-Khan and Nora Baker, was a British resistance agent in France in World War II who served in the Special Operations Executive (SOE). The purpose of S ...
and
Lilian Rolfe
Lilian Vera Rolfe, (26 April 1914 – 5 February 1945) was an Allied secret agent in the Second World War.
Early life
Rolfe and her twin sister Helen Fedora Rolfe were the daughters of George Rolfe, a British chartered accountant working in Pa ...
, on the Vera Atkins Memorial Seat in the
Allied Special Forces Memorial Grove at the
National Memorial Arboretum
The National Memorial Arboretum is a British site of national remembrance at Alrewas, near Lichfield, Staffordshire. Its objective is to honour the fallen, recognise service and sacrifice, and foster pride in the British Armed Forces and civilian ...
in
Staffordshire
Staffordshire (; postal abbreviation Staffs.) is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. It borders Cheshire to the northwest, Derbyshire and Leicestershire to the east, Warwickshire to the southeast, the West Midlands Cou ...
. Her name is also on a stone plaque, along with the names of
Diana Rowden
Diana Hope Rowden (31 January 1915 – 6 July 1944) served in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force and was an agent for the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) during World War II. Rowden was a member of SOE's SOE F Sectio ...
,
Andrée Borrel
Andrée Raymonde Borrel (18 November 1919 – 6 July 1944), code named Denise, was a French woman who served in the French Resistance and as an agent for Britain's clandestine Special Operations Executive in World War II. The purpose of SOE was ...
, and
Vera Leigh
Vera Leigh (17 March 1903 – 6 July 1944) was an agent of the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive during World War II.
Leigh was a member of the SOE's Donkeyman circuit and Inventor sub-circuit in occupied France until ...
, in the furnace room of the Natzweiler-Struthof crematorium.
In 1985, SOE agent and painter
Brian Stonehouse
Brian Julian Warry Stonehouse MBE (29 August 1918 – 2 December 1998) was an English painter and Special Operations Executive agent during World War II. He was born in Torquay, England and had a brother, Dale. When his family moved to Fran ...
, who saw Olschanezky and the three other female SOE agents at the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp just before their deaths, painted a poignant watercolour of the four women which now hangs in the
Special Forces Club
The Special Forces Club (SFC) is a private members' club located at 8 Herbert Crescent in Knightsbridge, London. Initially established in 1945 for former personnel of the Special Operations Executive, members of wartime resistance organisations, ...
in London.
Related cultural works
* ''
Carve Her Name with Pride
''Carve Her Name with Pride'' is a 1958 British war drama film based on the book of the same name by R. J. Minney.
The film, directed by Lewis Gilbert, is based on the true story of Special Operations Executive agent Violette Szabo, GC, who w ...
'' (1958)
:Movie based on the book by R.J. Minney about
Violette Szabo
Violette Reine Elizabeth Szabo, GC (née Bushell; 26 June 1921 – February 1945) was a British-French Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent during the Second World War and a posthumous recipient of the George Cross. On her second mission i ...
, starring
Paul Scofield
David Paul Scofield (21 January 1922 – 19 March 2008) was a British actor. During a six-decade career, Scofield achieved the US Triple Crown of Acting, winning an Academy Awards, Academy Award, Emmy Award, Emmy, and Tony Award, Tony for his ...
and
Virginia McKenna
Dame Virginia Anne McKenna, (born 7 June 1931) is a British stage and screen actress, author and wildlife campaigner. She is best known for the films ''A Town Like Alice'' (1956), '' Carve Her Name with Pride'' (1958), ''Born Free'' (1966), and ...
.
* ''Churchill's Spy School'' (2010)
:Documentary about the SOE "finishing school" on the Beaulieu estate in Hampshire.
* ''
Les Femmes de l'Ombre
''Female Agents'' (french: Les Femmes de l'ombre) is a 2008 French historical drama film directed by Jean-Paul Salomé and starring Sophie Marceau, Julie Depardieu, Marie Gillain, Déborah François, and Moritz Bleibtreu. Written by Salomé and L ...
'' (aka ''Female Agents'') (2008)
:French film about five SOE female agents and their contribution towards the
D-Day
The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as D ...
invasions
* ''
Now It Can Be Told'' (aka ''School for Danger'') (1946)
:Filming began in 1944 and starred real-life SOE agents Captain
Harry Rée
Harry Alfred Rée, DSO, OBE (15 October 1914 – 17 May 1991) was a British educationist and wartime member of the Special Operations Executive. Of the more than 400 SOE agents who worked in France during World War II, M.R.D. Foot, the offici ...
and
Jacqueline Nearne
Jacqueline Nearne MBE (born 27 May 1916, Brighton, England, died 15 August 1982 in London, England), code named Jacqueline and Josette, was an agent for the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) in Nazi-occupied France during World War II. ...
codenamed "Felix" and "Cat", respectively. The film tells the story of the training of agents for SOE and their operations in France. The training sequences were filmed using the SOE equipment at the training schools at Traigh and Garramor (South Morar) and at
Ringway.
* ''
Odette'' (1950)
:Movie based on the book by
Jerrard Tickell
Edward Jerrard Tickell (14 February 1905 – 27 March 1966) was an Irish writer, known for his novels and historical books on the Second World War.
Biography
Jerrard Tickell was born in Dublin and educated in Tipperary and, from 1919 until 1922 a ...
about
Odette Sansom
Odette Sansom (28 April 1912 – 13 March 1995), also known as Odette Churchill and Odette Hallowes, code named Lise, was an agent for the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) in France during the Second World War. S ...
, starring
Anna Neagle
Dame Florence Marjorie Wilcox (''née'' Robertson; 20 October 1904 – 3 June 1986), known professionally as Anna Neagle, was an English stage and film actress, singer, and dancer.
She was a successful box-office draw in the British cinema ...
and
Trevor Howard
Trevor Wallace Howard-Smith (29 September 1913 – 7 January 1988) was an English stage, film, and television actor. After varied work in the theatre, he achieved star status with his role in the film ''Brief Encounter'' (1945), followed by ''T ...
. The film includes an interview with
Maurice Buckmaster
Colonel Maurice James Buckmaster (11 January 1902 – 17 April 1992) was the leader of the French section of Special Operations Executive and was awarded the ''Croix de Guerre''.
Apart from his war service, he was a corporate manager with the ...
, head of SOE's F-Section.
* ''Robert and the Shadows'' (2004)
:French documentary on
France Télévisions
France Télévisions (; stylized since 2018 as ) is the French national public television broadcaster. It is a state-owned company formed from the integration of the public television channels France 2 (formerly Antenne 2) and France 3 (former ...
. Jean Marie Barrere, the French director, uses the story of his own grandfather (Robert) to tell the French what SOE did at that time. Robert was a French teacher based in the southwest of France, who worked with SOE agent
George Reginald Starr
George Reginald Starr (6 April 1904 – 2 September 1980), code name Hilaire, was a British mining engineer and an agent of the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) organisation in World War II. He was the organiser ...
(codenamed "Hilaire", in charge of the "Wheelwright" circuit).
* ''
Wish Me Luck
''Wish Me Luck'' is a British television drama about the exploits of British women undercover agents during the Second World War. The series was made by London Weekend Television for the ITV network between 17 January 1988 and 25 February 199 ...
'' (1987)
:Television series that was broadcast between 1987 and 1990 featuring the exploits of the women and, less frequently, the men of SOE, which was renamed the 'Outfit'.
See also
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British military history of World War II
The military history of the United Kingdom in World War II covers the Second World War against the Axis powers, starting on 3 September 1939 with the declaration of war by the United Kingdom and France, followed by the UK's Dominions and Cr ...
*
Military history of France during World War II
From 1939 to 1940, the French Third Republic was at war with Nazi Germany. In 1940, the German forces defeated the French in the Battle of France. The German occupied the north and west of French territory and a collaborationist régime under Ph ...
*
Resistance during World War II
Resistance movements during World War II occurred in every occupied country by a variety of means, ranging from non-cooperation to propaganda, hiding crashed pilots and even to outright warfare and the recapturing of towns. In many countries, r ...
References
Citations
Bibliography
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Further reading
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External links
*le site EdC
Sonia Olschanezky
{{DEFAULTSORT:Olchanezky, Sonya
1923 births
1944 deaths
German people of Russian-Jewish descent
German Jews who died in the Holocaust
German emigrants to France
French Jews who died in the Holocaust
French people of Russian-Jewish descent
Female wartime spies
Female resistance members of World War II
Special Operations Executive personnel killed in World War II
Jews in the French resistance
French Resistance members
Executed spies
Spies who died in Nazi concentration camps
French people who died in Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp
People from Chemnitz
People from Saxony executed in Nazi concentration camps
Executed German people
People executed by Nazi Germany by lethal injection
Resistance members killed by Nazi Germany
Jewish military personnel
People executed for murder