Marcus Reginald Bloom (24 September 1907 – 6 November 1944) was a British Special Operations Executive agent during the Second World War.

Early life

Bloom was born in 1907 in Brick Lane, Whitechapel (as per his birth certificate) but the family later moved to Tottenham, London, the son of Harry Pizer Bloom and Anna Sadie Davidoff Bloom, in an orthodox Jewish home. He helped out working at his father’s cinema in Wandsworth, their mail order textile firm, or in their restaurant business. In the 1930s his father sent him Paris to run the mail-order business, and he became fluent in French. The firm closed after five years and he returned to London and married in March 1938.

World War II

He served in the Royal Artillery in 1941 and joined 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 ...

The National Archives : HS 9/166/7 – Marcus BLOOM
/ref> in February 1942. On the night of 3/4 November 1942 he was landed at Port Miou, near

Cassis Cassis (; Occitan: ''Cassís'') is a commune situated east of Marseille in the department of Bouches-du-Rhône in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, whose coastline is known in English as the French Riviera, in Southern France. In 201 ...

in southern France, with SOE agents George Starr, organiser of

WHEELWRIGHT A wheelwright is a craftsman who builds or repairs wooden wheels. The word is the combination of "wheel" and the word "wright", (which comes from the Old English word "''wryhta''", meaning a worker or shaper of wood) as in shipwright and arkwr ...

; Mary Herbert, courier for

SCIENTIST A scientist is a person who conducts scientific research to advance knowledge in an area of the natural sciences. In classical antiquity, there was no real ancient analog of a modern scientist. Instead, philosophers engaged in the philosoph ...

; Marie-Thérèse Le Chêne, courier for SPRUCE; 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 ...

for SPINDLE.''Secret Flotillas: the Clandestine Sea Lines to France and French North Africa'', Brooks Richards,

HMSO The Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI) is the body responsible for the operation of His Majesty's Stationery Office (HMSO) and of other public information services of the United Kingdom. The OPSI is part of the National Archives of the U ...

, 1996. He became wireless operator in the PRUNUS network organised by Maurice Pertschuk, with Philippe de Gunzbourg as courier. Bloom worked very successfully and sent and received many messages to and from London (estimated at over fifty), having to keep constantly on the move to avoid the German radio detection vans. He also assisted in sending and receiving messages for Starr in the WHEELWRIGHT network. Philippe de Gunzbourg noted that Pertschuk had a reckless lack of security, with resistance leaders sharing tables in black-market restaurants in Toulouse and speaking in English, and on 12 April 1943 Pertschuk, Bloom, and several of their key colleagues were arrested. They were possibly betrayed by double agent

Roger Bardet Roger Bardet was a member of the French resistance organisation known as CARTE, based in Cannes, organised by André Girard. He was betrayed by a fellow agent and became a double agent. In November 1942 CARTE courier André Marsac was arrested i ...

. The network collapsed though de Gunzbourg escaped and transferred to the WHEELWRIGHT network. Pertschuk was deported to

Buchenwald Buchenwald (; literally 'beech forest') was a Nazi concentration camp established on hill near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within Germany's 1937 borders. Many actual or sus ...

and executed.''Das Reich: The March of the 2nd SS Panzer Division Through France.'' Max Hastings.
/ref> Bloom was taken to

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 small ...

and Avenue Foch in Paris and severely beaten but revealed nothing. In August 1944 he was deported to

Mauthausen Mauthausen was a Nazi concentration camp on a hill above the market town A market town is a settlement most common in Europe that obtained by custom or royal charter, in the Middle Ages, a market right, which allowed it to host a regu ...

and executed on 6 November 1944. Marcus Bloom -1

"Lt Marcus R Bloom Mentioned in Despatches Jewish secret agent of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) lived at 9 Brownlow Court. Captured and murdered in Mauthausen Concentration Camp, 1944. Be Strong and of Good Courage (Joshua 1:9) Hebrew Text (Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation and AJEX U.K.)"

Recognition

Awards

* United Kingdom: Mentioned in Despatches

Monuments

* He is honoured at 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 ...

, Indre, as one of the 104 agents of section F who lost their lives for France’s liberation. *

Brookwood Memorial Brookwood Cemetery, also known as the London Necropolis, is a burial ground in Brookwood, Surrey, England. It is the largest cemetery in the United Kingdom and one of the largest in Europe. The cemetery is listed a Grade I site in the Regist ...

, Surrey. Panel 21 Column 3. * On a plaque on his mother’s grave at Edmonton Federation Synagogue cemetery, Montague Road, London. * On the War Memorial of the St John’s Wood Synagogue in Grove End Road, London. *Memorial at Mauthausen camp. *A memorial plaque at Brownlow Court, Hampstead, erected in 2022 by the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation and AJEX -U.K.

Early life

World War II

Recognition

Awards

Monuments

References

Further reading