Women Wartime Spies

by Ann Kramer

  To all intents and purposes the fate of these four women was now known but even at that point information was coming through to suggest that the fourth woman was not Noor Inayat Khan; the prison records for Karlsruhe were discovered and there was no record of Noor having been there. Instead there was a name that Vera Atkins did not know, namely Sonia Olschanezky. Born in Germany the daughter of a Russian Jew, and a professional dancer, Sonia had been a member of the French Resistance and was recruited in France by SOE to join the Prosper circuit, which she did in 1943. She managed to avoid the Prosper round-up but was captured in January 1944 and imprisoned at Fresnes then taken to Karlsruhe. Because Sonia Olschanezky had been recruited for the SOE in France, Vera Atkins had never met her and knew nothing about her. She had assumed that any descriptions she was given of the fourth woman at Natzweiler had to refer to Noor Inayat Khan. But she was wrong. It was Sonia Olschanezky who was killed at Natzweiler, not Noor Inayat Khan. However, the official records were not changed at that point, so Noor’s family, who were devastated by the news, believed Noor had died at Natzweiler.

  Dachau

  Following the Natzweiler trial, Vera Atkins focused on the other women who had been in Karlsruhe and who had left the prison in September 1944. Talking to many witnesses, Vera established that the local Gestapo had collected Madeleine Damerment, Eliane Plewman and Yolande Beekman from Karlsruhe on 11 September 1944. Madeleine Damerment had taken a small case with her. Getting more information was difficult; many senior Gestapo had gone into hiding but Vera Atkins put out inquiries and eventually by May 1946 she was sent information obtained from a member of the Gestapo, Christian Ott, which stated that Madeleine Damerment, Yolande Beekman and Eliane Plewman had been sent to Dachau, a concentration camp in Bavaria, about 12 miles north of Munich. However, he also mentioned a fourth woman, who had been held at Pforzheim prison and joined the other three before they were taken to Dachau. The officer in charge of their transport was a man called Max Wassmer. According to Ott’s evidence, the women were handcuffed and taken by train first to Munich and from there to Dachau. He was told they would be executed. According to his statement, the women were aged between 24 and 32 and well dressed. He said that one of the prisoners spoke good German and that on questioning them he found out that two of the women were English, one was French and the fourth was Dutch through marriage. One of the women told him she had been parachuted into France and had worked for the secret service. Ott and Wessmer took the women to Dachau, arriving at about 10.00 pm. Ott never saw the women again but according to his statement, Wessmer was present when the four women were executed and told Ott about it. According to Wassmer’s account, as given by Ott, at about 8.30 in the morning the women were brought out of the barracks and told they were going to be shot. One of the women asked for a priest but her request was refused and she was told there was no priest in the camp. The four women were told to kneel down; apparently the two Englishwomen held hands, as did the other two women and all four were shot in the back of the head. Their bodies were taken away, presumably cremated. Ott did not know any of the women’s names but he remembered that the German-speaking woman had a full figure and a pale round face: it was Madeleine Damerment.

  Vera Atkins managed to track down Wassmer, who had been interned, and he confirmed the information. Once again Vera Atkins sent her report to Norman Mott. She also wrote draft letters for the next of kin. By and large the letters followed a formula and are all contained in the personal files at The National Archives. Vera Atkins did, however, amend the letter to Madeleine’s Damerment’s mother so that she should not know that her daughter arrived in France only to be arrested immediately by the Gestapo. Madeleine Brooke is the keeper of her aunt’s papers, medals and surviving memorabilia; among these is the letter sent to her grandmother telling her there was still no news of Madeleine and a copy of the letter that Norman Mott sent to Mme Damerment informing her of Madeleine’s death.

  Vera Atkin’s report, which she sent to Major Mott on 25 June 1946, was headed:

  SUBJECT: Mrs E.S. Plewman (FANY)

  Miss Madeleine Damerment Alias Dussautoy, FANY

  Mrs Y.E.M. Beekman, née Unternahrer

  It has now been established that the above named were executed in the camp of Dachau in the early hours of 13 September 1944, probably by shooting. The full circumstances of this case are not yet known but the fact that they were killed in the early hours of 13 September 1944 has been definitely established. I assume that you will take the usual casualty action.

  The facts, as far as they are known, are as follows:

  Elaine Plewman was captured at Marseilles on or about 23 March 1944. It is believed that she passed through the prison of Les Beaumettes in Marseilles and was then sent to Fresnes near Paris. Yolande Beekman captured near St Quentin on or about 15 January 1944 and she was first taken to 84 Avenue Foch, Paris and later transferred to Fresnes. Madeleine Damerment was captured on landing on 29 February 1944 near Chartres. I believe she was taken to Fresnes straight away.

  On 12 May 1944 they left Fresnes Prison together with Odette Sansom – who has returned safely – and Diana Rowden, Nora Inayat Khan, Vera Leigh, and Andrée Borrel who were killed at Natzweiler on 6 July 44. They went straight to Karlsruhe where they were put into the civilian jail for women where they remained until the early hours of 12 September 1944. I have seen the following witnesses apart from Mrs Odette Sansom in connection with their stay in Karlsruhe:-

  Frau Becker and Fraulein Hager, in charge of the womens’ [sic] jail, Karlsruhe as well as the three temporary wardresses all of whom remember the girls. I have also seen:

  Fraulein Hedwig Muller… who shared a cell with Madeleine Damerment whom she knew as Martine Dussautoy. I enclose a letter from Hedwig Muller which she asks should be forwarded to Martine’s mother. I also saw

  Frau Else Sauer of 3 Nachtdgallernweg… Karlsruhe, who was in Martine’s cell the night that she was fetched away. I attach Frau Sauer’s sworn statement. From this it will be seen that she also knew Eliane Plewman by sight and that she saw her leaving at the name time as Martine. I also saw Frau Hagon… who shared a cell with Yolande Beekman. I attach translation of her deposition.

  Whilst in the Karlsruhe prison the girls were not ill-treated; they were put into separate cells which they shared with one or two German prisoners – most of them appear to have been political rather than criminal prisoners – and there is no doubt that Hedwig Muller, Elise Sauer and Nina Hagen struck up a very real friendship with our girls and that they did everything possible to help them by sharing their food parcels and having their laundry washed, etc. Nevertheless they had, obviously, a very hard time of it and they became very anxious when first the four girls and then Odette Sansom disappeared and they could find out nothing about their fate. They were locked up in their cells during the heavy raids on Karlsruhe and apparently showed amazing courage and cheered up their cell-mates, all of whom spoke of them with the greatest admiration.

  On the afternoon of 11 September, Frau Becker received instructions to prepare the girls for departure early next morning and she went round to each of the cells and returned to the girls their personal belongings and told them they would be moving off the next day. At about 1.30 am on 12 September they were called out of their cells by an elderly male warder who was on night duty and were taken down to the reception rooms where they were collected by Gestapo officers. I have interrogated various members of the Karlsruhe Gestapo and in particular the two officials who accompanied the girls to Dachau. Their accounts of the journey differ in several respects but I am satisfied that, in broad outline, the following took place:-

  The girls were driven by car, accompanied by 3 Gestapo officials, two of whom have been identified as Kriminalsecretar Wassmer and Ott, to the station of Karlsruhe or of the nearby town of Bruchsal and caught the early train for Munich, arriving in the later afternoon. Here they changed trains and caught the last train to Dachau, some 20 miles north-west of Munich. Th
ey arrived after dark and had to walk up to the camp which they reached about midnight. They were handed over to some camp official and spent the night in the cells. Between 8 and 10 the next morning (13 September) they were taken to the crematorium compound and shot through the head and immediately cremated.

  Vera Atkins attached translations of statements made by Max Wassmer and extracts from Christian Ott’s statement. Both men were in US custody and she was intending to interrogate them when they were moved into the British zone. She also asked Mott to send letters to the next of kin, and to the Mother Superior of a Catholic Convent where Madeleine Damerment had stayed whilst in England.

  On 10 July 1946, Mott wrote to Madeleine Damerment’s mother saying that it was ‘with deepest regret that I have to inform you that your daughter, Madeleine, was killed in the early hours of 13 September 1944 in the camp of Dachau. According to what is believed to be a reliable report she was shot through the back of the head at close range and death was immediate. The body was cremated.’ He went on to say that Madeleine had ‘volunteered to return to France on a special mission in the company of two British officers when she was captured on 29 February 1944 near Chartres.’ He explained that she been taken with seven other British women to Karlsruhe, which held various political prisoners, many of whom had been interviewed and one of whom, Fraulein Hedwig Muller, who shared Madeleine’s cell, had befriended her. No doubt, in order to soften the blow, he then wrote ‘whilst the long months spent in prison in Karlsruhe were certainly hard, I am glad to say that the girls were in no way ill-treated. The news of the Invasion and the Allied advance buoyed up their morale and they never lost their courage or their faith… I know this tragic news will be a great shock to you and the only consolation I feel able to offer is that until the end she was cheerful and of good faith and that while perhaps suffering equal hardship she was spared the horrors of a concentration camp. Madeleine worked and sacrificed her life for the Allied cause and this will not be forgotten by all who knew her both here and in France.’

  An identical letter was sent to the Mother Superior of the French Convent in Hitchin, with whom Madeleine had become very close. She had left two wristwatches with the Mother Superior for safekeeping. Similar letters were sent to the families of all the women agents who were killed, although the more shocking details of their deaths were left out.

  Chapter 8

  Setting The Record Straight

  ‘They died as gallantly as they had served the Resistance in France during the common struggle for freedom from tyranny.’

  DACHAU, PLAQUE IN MEMORY OF SOE WOMEN

  The news of the women’s deaths and the work they had been involved in came as a great shock to their families. While family members including Noor Inayat Khan’s brother and Vera Leigh’s stepbrother had guessed their sisters were involved in something very dangerous, others had no idea at all. Madeleine Damerment’s mother thought her daughter was safe in England and, until she died until a few years ago, Madeleine’s sister Charline, found it very distressing to talk about. Madeleine Damerment’s niece also says to this day she finds it hard to read about the activities of the French Resistance. Other families too were devastated, among them Noor Inayat Khan’s mother who was inconsolable, so much so that Noor’s brother, Vilayat, subsequently wrote to Vera Atkins asking that any further information about his sister should be sent directly to him, not his mother. However, in the case of Noor Inayat Khan, the information given to the family that she had died in Natzweiler was wrong.

  When Vera Atkins returned to England she interviewed Dr Goetz, who had masterminded the radio deception at the Avenue Foch; he had been taken to England for interrogation. He mentioned a female prisoner called ‘Madeleine’ – Noor Inayat Khan’s alias – who had refused to co-operate in any way and confirmed that they had used her wireless and codes to deceive SOE. He also stated that she had been sent to Germany soon after being captured in 1943. In November 1946 Vera Atkins was forwarded a letter from woman called Yolande Lagrave, which had been sent to Lord Walkden, a Labour peer, and then sent to her. The writer, a Frenchwoman, had been arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Pforzheim as a political prisoner. She was the only one of her group of prisoners who had managed to survive. She was repatriated in May 1945 and after the war had gone in search of a woman, whom she knew as Nora Baker. She wrote to Lord Walkden, whom she had known before the war:

  ‘At Pforzheim where I lived in a cell, I was able to correspond with an English lady parachutist, who was interned there and who was very unhappy. Hands and feet chained, she was never allowed out, and I could hear the blows she received. She left Pforzheim in September 1944, but before she left she was able to let me know – not her name, that was too risky – but her pseudonym and this by means of her mess tin. I also registered the address “Nora Baker”, Radio Centre, Officers Service, RAF.’

  Nora Baker was the English name that Noor Inayat Khan had taken when she was in the WAAF. If she had been in Pforzheim in September 1944 she could not have been executed at Natzweiler in July. Confronted with this new evidence, Vera Atkins returned to Germany to find out more. While Vera Atkins was discovering new information about Noor Inayat Khan, so too was Vilayat Khan, who had also received a letter from Yolande Lagrave. From various accounts it emerged that Noor Inayat Khan had indeed been taken to Pforzheim where, considered by the Germans to be a very dangerous woman, she was singled out for ‘special treatment’, kept on near-starvation rations and regularly beaten up. She had managed to communicate with Yolande Lagrave and other French women prisoners by scratching messages on the bottom of her food bowl and they had done similarly. Her final message to them was ‘I am leaving’, which is when, as other evidence showed, she was taken to Dachau, where she was one of the four women executed there on 13 September 1944.

  In July 1947 Norman Mott finally wrote to Vilayat Khan with confirmation that Noor Inayat Khan, after spending about two months at the Avenue Foch, had been imprisoned in Pforzheim jail and then taken to Dachau where she was executed. For Noor Inayat Khan’s family this second blow was completely devastating; her mother never recovered. Vera Atkins now knew for certain that it was Sonia Olschanezky who had been killed at Natzweiler, but for some extraordinary and unknown reason she did not tell Sonia’s family about her death. Perhaps ironically, it also later emerged that it was Sonia who had transmitted the message to SOE telling them that ‘Madeleine’ (Noor Inayat Khan) was in hospital, that is that she had been captured.

  The reality of how the women were treated at Dachau was also glossed over; in fact the actual details were not known for many years. Instead the comforting image of the four women holding hands and being shot cleanly in the head remained the official story for a very long time. Even today, anyone who calls up any of the four women’s names on Wikipedia is likely to find that version of events. However, as years went by the truth began to emerge. After the war a woman called Jean Overton Fuller, who had been a close friend of Noor, began to do her own research, travelling extensively through Europe to do so. She wrote up her findings in a book in a book about Noor Inayat Khan called Madeleine, which was published in 1952. Some while afterwards she received a letter from a Lieutenant Colonel Wickey who had worked for Canadian intelligence during the war. During this time he had met a German officer who had spent time at Dachau and who described Noor as looking ‘much like a Creole’. From him he had learned details of Noor’s last day at Dachau and they were harrowing. From his evidence, and other sources, it would seem that all the women were beaten when they arrived at Dachau but Noor was singled out for particularly appalling treatment. She was stripped and systematically abused and kicked in her cell throughout the night. The following morning, by now what one writer described as ‘a bloody mess’, she was beaten again and then shot in the head. It seems her last word was ‘Liberté’.

  Recognition

  After the war it took a while for the public to learn about SOE and its work. As news filtered through there wa
s considerable debate about what it had achieved, and whether it had been appropriate to send not just women, but also what many people considered to be amateurs into enemy-occupied territory, where so many of them died. Not surprisingly SOE defended its record – there is little doubt that certain acts of sabotage were immensely important in France and elsewhere, and that SOE played a major role providing arms and supplies to resistance movements in various countries, as well as providing training and encouragement. The American General Dwight Eisenhower considered that the SOE’s work had shortened the war by at least six months. At the same time, in Britain, there were demands to know what had gone wrong, particularly in France with the collapse of the Prosper circuit. Conspiracy theorists had a field day, the most challenging theory being that Maurice Buckmaster had deliberately sent agents into France knowing that networks had been blown, which was hotly denied. As arguments and counter-arguments raged, there were demands from various people, including Dame Irene Ward, to set the record straight and let the public have the full story of SOE. Eventually, historian M.R.D. Foot – who had himself been dropped into France in 1944 – was asked to write an official history; he was given access to SOE files and his book SOE in France was published in 1966. Since then there have been many books on SOE, an organization which continues to fascinate the public. Some arguments continue, among them the question of whether Noor Inayat Khan should ever have been sent to France. The opening of SOE files in The National Archives since the late 1990s has also prompted more books about the SOE, particularly books on female agents who by and large have been overlooked, or at least not allocated nearly the same amount of coverage in books about SOE as the men, which given that SOE treated men and women equally, is perhaps odd.