Odette Labels are the industry standard for Labelling in the Automotive Industry. [6][5], As cover for her secret work, Sansom was enrolled in the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, which supplied SOE with support personnel. Odette Sansom GC, MBE (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. She feared neither danger nor dagger, interrogation nor torture. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. In 1942,Odette Sansomwas invited to join 'F' Section of theSpecial Operations Executive(SOE). Its agents were mainly tasked with sabotage and subversion behind enemy lines. What is a good mission statement for a salon? Great access to I-80. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience. "Every Sunday morning, after church, we were taken to the grave of my father, who was killed at Verdun 30 days before Armistice. Some officials did not believe her story and cast doubt upon her integrity. On . (February 22, 2023). He hoped that her supposed connections to the Prime Minister might allow him to negotiate his way out of execution. With her three daughters in a convent school, Odette trained as an SOE agent. Sansom was shocked by the lax attitude towards security by her French supporters. The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. She was subsisting on just one slice of bread and a bowl of. London: Chapman & Hall, 1949. On her second mission in France, Szab parachuted behind German lines the day after D-Day and established contact with resistance forces in the area. French-bornOdette Sansomworked undercover in France during theSecond World War. [35], She served as a technical advisor on a film on her fellow SOE agent Violette Szabo, Carve Her Name with Pride. ." They either had a skill the SS valued, a job where they could steal food, or a protector who looked after them. The forgotten female WWII-era spy who stayed silent under gruesome Nazi torture Odette Sansom was the first woman to receive the UK's second-highest honor for courage under fire. She became a national heroine and in 1950,a filmwas made about her. She left her children in a convent and began training with the SOE. As a child she contracted serious illnesses which blinded her for three and a half years, as well as polio, which resulted in her being bedridden for months. All Rights Reserved. The nuns considered her volatile, petulant, and stubborn. [21], After the Allied landings in the south of France in August 1944, on orders from Berlin, all food was withdrawn for a week, all light was removed from Sansom's cell, and the heat was turned up. Infuriated, Bleicher sent her to Ravensbrck concentration camp. She began to understand that they were asking her to volunteer for more than part-time work as a translator. Sansom was trained to serve as a courier and a circuit organizer. Yet, there was an undercurrent of bitterness and turbulence in her. On April 28, 1945, on her 33rd birthday, Sansom was released from Ravensbrck weighing less than 90 pounds. Distressed by the occupation of France by the German Army in Born Odette Marie Cline Brailly on April 28, 1912, in France; died in 1995 in England; daughter of Yvonne Brailly and Gaston Brailly (a bank official and soldier); married Roy Sansom, in 1930; married Captain Peter Morland Churchill, in 1947; married Geoffrey Hallowes; children: (first marriage) Franoise (b. Around February 5th 1945 Violette Szabo was executed by a shot in the back of her head aged just twenty three. Selectors, relying on instinct, looked for spirit rather than muscle. Walther PPK pistol taken by Odette Sansom from Fritz Suhren, commandant of Ravensbrck concentration camp, after he had driven her to the American lines in May 1945. The marriage ended in divorce. However, against all odds she survived the war and testified against the prison guards at the Hamburg Ravensbrck trials. World War Two's most highly decorated female spy has had a train named after her by Great Western Railway. Joined the Resistance (1942); captured and brought to Fresne Prison in Paris (1943); tortured by the Gestapo (May 26, 1943); transferred to Karlsruhe prison (May 12, 1944); brought to Ravensbrck concentration camp for women in Germany under sentence of death (July 18, 1944); released from Ravensbrck (April 28, 1945); received George Cross from King George VI (November 19, 1946); testified for the prosecution at the War Crimes Court in Hamburg, Germany (December 16, 1946). If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it. She learned how to fire British guns, how to identify the insignia on German uniforms, how to write, transmit, and receive Morse code, how to handle a canoe, and how to evade answers under SS (Schutzstaffel or "elite guard") interrogation; in short, all the techniques necessary for leading the double life of a spy. They learned how to pick locks and pockets, forge signatures, and derail trains. ), produced in Britain by Lowpert-Dowling-UA, starring Anna Neagle and Trevor Howard, 1951 (Sansom was technical advisor on the film). They claimed they were husband and wife and related to Winston Churchill. Germany. Magazines, Digital People would cross paths, sometimes in crucial ways, then slip away and never see one another again. Sansom arrived in France on 2 November 1942 and worked as a courier with the Spindle network (or circuit) of SOE headed by Peter Churchill (whom she later married). When Odette again refused, the Nazi systematically tore out each of her toenails, one by one. In addition to the MLA, Chicago, and APA styles, your school, university, publication, or institution may have its own requirements for citations. Held by the Gestapo. Moved north, she was locked for nearly a week in a cage at police headquarters in Frankfurt. The following month, after American and British troops landed in French North Africa, the Germans were prompted to enter the unoccupied zone, at which point the Mediterranean coast took on new significance for the SOE. In 1941 she responded to requests by the War Office for people to send photographs of France. tortured by the Gestapo she had all her toenails pulled out. Odette Sansom (1912 - 1995) - a French/British spy who worked as an SOE operative in occupied France. During her internment, she suffered brutal treatment, including long periods of solitary confinement in the dark. In some cases, hit-and-run guerilla attacks were staged. Odette Hallowes: The WWII British Spy - Forces Network It's 1942 and German troops have occupied most of Europe. Sansom was aided in her endurance in prison by her early blindness and paralysis, and by the example of her grandfather, who "did not accept weakness very easily." This essay consists of three articles that examine different aspects of the history of prisoners of war. Born November 15, 1891 She was captured six months later and imprisoned in Fresne, the Gestapo prison in Paris. Erwin Rommel is know, Reinhard Heydrich In 1914 when World War I broke out, Odette's father joined the Infantry Regiment and received the Croix de Guerre and Mdaille Militaire for his bravery. Odette Marie Cline was born on April 28, 1912 to Gaston and Yvonne Brailly who lived in Amiens, France.Her brother Louis was born a year later in 1913. In his book Odette: The Story of a British Agent (1949), Jerrard Tickell credits Sansom's survival to "the unassailable dignity in which she enclosed herself." [2] She had one brother. On She was captured, interrogated and tortured, and in July 1944, sent to Ravensbrck concentration camp in Germany. she married Roy Sansom, a hotel worker, in 1931. Check here if you would like to receive subscription offers and other promotions via email from TIME group companies. German military commander Heinrich Himmler became, Prisoners of War. Other The marriage Four female SOE agents had been put to death in a concentration camp by lethal injection that month. For three months and eight days she languished in a small cell, again on starvation rations. This act of selfless bravery saved him from interrogation but it was the start of Sansom's ordeal. You can unsubscribe at any time. They were cremated, but evidence emerged later that some of them were still alive when they went into the ovens. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Nancy Wake was the most decorated woman of the Second World War and by 1943 she was the Gestapos most wanted person with a 5 million-franc price tag and lived most of her life on the edge and in constant danger and her story is one of sheer bravery, strength and defiance. Odette, who by that time had married her third husband and become Odette Hallowes, died in 1995 at the age of . Indeed the theme of her postwar working life, with its service to various charities and help for the underprivileged, was the healing of those wounds, both physical and mental, which had been inflicted upon individuals by the war. Still thinking she was going to be executed, she was driven by the Nazi commandant of Ravensbrck, Fritz Shren, in his Mercedes to the American line. Churchill and Sansom claimed they were a married couple and related to Winston Churchill to make themselves seem more valuable as prisoners and less likely to be executed as spies. She refused to disclose the whereabouts of Rabinovitch and another British agent, stuck to her fabricated cover story that Churchill was the nephew of Prime Minister Winston Churchill, that she was his wife, and that he knew nothing of her activities. Photo courtesy of FANY. It reads: In love and homage to Mrs. Yolande E.M. Beekman, Croix de Guerre, Miss Danielle Bloch , Miss Andre M. Borrel, Miss Muriel Byck , Miss Madeleine Damerment, Miss Noor Inayat Khan, Mrs. Cecily M. Lefort , Miss Vera E. Leigh, Mrs. Eliane S. Plewman, Croix de Guerre, Miss Lilian V. Rolfe , Miss Diana H. Rowden, Mrs. Yvonne Rudellat , Mrs. Violette R.E. She left her three daughters in a convent school, and was trained to be sent into Nazi-occupied France to work with the French Resistance. This would mean securing an apartment in a specified part of town in France to which the SOE might send other members, either as part of an escape team or to encourage sabotage and action by the French Resistance. [3], At the time of her arrival in France, the Spindle network was beset by internal strife between the principal agent, Andr Girard, and his assistant and with the network's radio operator, Adolphe Rabinovitch. He told the Americans, "This is Frau Churchill," believing that she was related to the prime minister of England. agents,Yolande Beekman, Eliane Plewman, Madeleine Damerment, Vera Captured by the Gestapo in France and consigned after being cruelly tortured in Pariss notorious Fresnes prison, to Ravensbrck concentration camp, she emerged emaciated, weak and gravely ill at the end of the war. She soon was made assistant to section head Colonel Maurice Buckmaster, and became a de facto intelligence officer. People of the Second World War (1939-45) Influential leaders, generals and civilians who caused, influenced and fought during the Second World War. A French agent working for the British during World War II, Odette Sansom left three small daughters to join the Resistance in 1942. A French agent working for the British during World War II, Odette Sansom left three small daughters to join the Resistance in 1942. Agents learned how to place explosive matchboxes or fountain pens where they would do the most damage. Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. The couple moved They would later have Lily in 1934 and Marianne in 1936. Captured by the Gestapo in France and consigned after being cruelly tortured in Pariss notorious Fresnes prison, to Ravensbrck concentration camp, she emerged emaciated, weak and gravely ill at the end of the war. Of the history of prisoners of War interrogation but it was the start of Sansom 's ordeal to... Story and cast doubt upon her integrity, on her 33rd birthday, Sansom was from! Into the ovens heroine and in July 1944, sent to Ravensbrck concentration.! 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