Over the next few months All were terrific spies and each played a key role in deceiving the Germans about D-Day. And if I can think that way instead of thinking what is going to happen in a half-hour's time," Because of her past illnesses she knew "I was able to accept this, and survive it." After receiving basic training in England, she was taken to France by boat in October 1942. For eight weeks, the women were apparently forgotten by the authorities and were housed, well apart from each other, in crowded cells in the civil prison. He died trying to find two of his men who had gone missing after the Battle of Verdun. Burvale Cemetery, Hersham, United Kingdom She was subsisting on just one slice of bread and a bowl of. They Feared No Evil: The Women Agents of Britain's Secret Armies, 193945. She is named on panel 26. "[5], The Germans generally found persons of the prisoners' own nationality to carry out the torture, she later recalled, so that one "could not say they were tortured by the Germans." She was also appointed a Chevalier de la Lgion d'honneur for her work with the French Resistance. Jorioz by Hugo Bleicher of the Abwehr. [14][15][16], At Fresnes prison, near Paris, Sansom was interrogated by the Gestapo fourteen times. All of her toenails had been ripped from her feet. They hid microdots bearing secret codes on their bodies, or in toothpaste tubes, shoelaces or buttons. A French agent working for the British during World War II, Odette Sansom left three small daughters to join the Resistance in 1942. Odette (123 min. As well as Odette Sansom there were numerous other female spies who served in the SOE as secret agents in occupied France they include: Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan. IWM collections. A glamorous spy, capture, imprisonment, horrific torture, dramatic escape, breathless romance. Something about the future seemed to haunt her. Ask a World War II aficionado to name the wars most highly decorated spy and youre likely to get one of three answers: Dusko Popov (code name: TRICYCLE), the MI5/MI6 double agent who warned the FBI about Pearl Harbor and inspired Ian Flemings James Bond; Juan Pujol (code name: GARBO), the crafty Spaniard who fooled the Germans with a fictional network of 15 agents; or Roman Garby-Czerniawski (code name: BRUTUS), the Polish double agent who at one time had a hundred agents in his INTERALLI circuit. They would stand on their swollen feet as the Nazis came, smoking and chatting, handing out pink tickets for the crematorium. 1995. where are the children of Odette Sansom now. And as every spy knew, the Gestapo needed to turn only one operative to infiltrate a circuit and spoil the lot. [21], When the Allies were only a few miles from Ravensbrck, the camp commandant Fritz Suhren forced Sansom into his car and drove to the advancing Americans to surrender. A courageous and brave soldier, Odette's father, Gaston Brailly, was promoted to sergeant, and earned the Croix de Guerre and the Medaille Militaire. Her conditions only improved in December 1944, when she was moved to a ground floor cell. Still Odette refused to speak. Peter Morland Churchill, DSO (14 January 1909 - 1 May 1972) was a British Special Operations Executive (SOE) officer in France during the Second World War.His wartime operations, which resulted in his capture and imprisonment in German concentration camps, and his subsequent marriage to fellow SOE officer, Odette Sansom, received considerable attention during the war and after, including a . The torture involved, beatings, having her toenails torn out and her spine branded by a hot iron. "Every Sunday morning, after church, we were taken to the grave of my father, who was killed at Verdun 30 days before Armistice. Of all the women who took part in special operations in France, Odette as she was universally known in spite of having borne three married surnames in her lifetime perhaps best symbolized the indomitable spirit of resistance to Nazism. Read before you think. It seems like you have tried to open a page that doesn't exist. I thank you for having faith in me. She was brutally tortured by the Gestapo for information on her fellow agents. At one point toward the end of the war, she witnessed an instance of cannibalism of a dead inmate by starving prisoners. With several other agents, two of them women, Odette sailed from Gibraltar at the end of October aboard a small Polish trading boat. Encyclopedia.com gives you the ability to cite reference entries and articles according to common styles from the Modern Language Association (MLA), The Chicago Manual of Style, and the American Psychological Association (APA). Infuriated, Bleicher sent her to Ravensbrck concentration camp. She lived quietly, carrying on an extensive correspondence. "And this is Fritz Shren," she said, "commandant of Ravensbrck concentration camp. The Gestapo believe that her husband Peter Churchill was related to Winston Churchill. Therefore, be sure to refer to those guidelines when editing your bibliography or works cited list. On 16th April, 1943, Sansom and Churchill were arrested by Hugo Men and women from the SOE would work within occupied nations, disabling factories, wrecking power houses, and severing lines of communication. In desperation, some women would scrape soot with their nails from the prison walls to try to blacken the roots of their gray hair hoping to look younger and be spared death during selection. 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. Most WWII history buffs are familiar with decorated spies like Dusko Popov, Juan Pujol, and Roman Garby-Czerniawski. Each Remembrance Day, Sansom placed a cross of flowers there. On May 12, 1944, 25 days before the Allies landed in Normandy, Sansom, along with six other women agents of the SOE, was taken in handcuffs by night train from Fresne to Karlsruhe Prison in Germany. Colonel Henri was a German officer who claimed he wished to work for the allies. 19471956 Spies were chosen carefully. Captain Peter Morland Churchill (code name "Raoul") was the commanding officer of the Marseilles-Cannes SOE circuit (code name "Spindle"), one of nearly 50 secret organizations run by British agents in occupied France. . 42,000 s/f building with Rt. near Herrlingen, Germany As she fell forward, the interrogator asked, "Where is Arnaud?" Wartime heroine of the French resistance Odette Churchill (1912 - 1995) at home in Hampshire, 15th February 1947. Where is Violette Szabo buried? Her torture was carried out by a "very good-looking young Frenchman" who she believed was mentally ill.[5], Sansom testified against the prison guards charged with war crimes at the 1946 Hamburg Ravensbrck Trials, which resulted in Suhren's execution in 1950. // Arizona Complex League, Courtney Wagner Obituary, Articles W