She was brutally tortured by the Gestapo for information on her fellow agents. Check here if you would like to receive subscription offers and other promotions via email from TIME group companies. In January I got a project to create a short film based on the life of WWII spy, Odette Sansom. Name variations: Odette Hallowes; Odette Churchill; (code names) Odette Matayer, Cline, Lise. On 2023 TIME USA, LLC. Sansom organized and brought about the largest resupply drops ever made to the Maquis who were hiding in the mountains above the Cote d'Azur in France. During a mission in France she was captured and imprisoned by the Nazi's. [26] After an appeal by her mother, it was returned with a note saying: "You, Madame, appear to be a dear old lady. To accomplish these tasks, couriers carried messages and money to their associates almost on a daily basis. As Sansom had told him she was related to Winston Churchill he took her with him to American forces, thinking that this would help his case. Charles de Gaulle/Date of death. Great True Spy Adventures. The marriage ended in divorce. importer. The infirmary doctor gave her an injection and she was returned to her cell. Prime commercial lot on Rt. While on a secret trip to England, he left her in charge. She had already made three unsuccessful attempts to get to France. Violette Szabo has no known grave. That she survived the war was almost miraculous. A glamorous spy, capture, imprisonment, horrific torture, dramatic escape, breathless romance. https://youtu.be/P60YDAkrbuw. the life story of Odette Sansom reads like the film script it later became. Messages were printed on ties, scarves, handkerchiefs, and underwear. 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. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. Odette Sansom had been a prisoner of the Gestapo for five months by October 1943. She feared neither danger nor dagger, interrogation nor torture. 1 lot left! Odette was a French woman married to an Englishman. Odette, who by that time had married her third husband and become Odette Hallowes, died in 1995 at the age of 82. Before war broke out in September 1939, Britain had established secret agencies to conduct clandestine operations in Europe. German military commander Heinrich Himmler became, Prisoners of War. 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 . However, the evaluation noted "her patriotism and keenness to do something for France." https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/sansom-odette-1912-1995, "Sansom, Odette (19121995) She was divorced from Churchill in 1955[28][25] and married Geoffrey Hallowes, a former SOE officer, in 1956. [24] Shren was hoping to save himself from execution as a war criminal after Germany's defeat. In December 1946, giving evidence at a war crimes trial in Hamburg, she would describe how she had seen women being driven screaming and struggling to the crematorium doors. When she refused to divulge the whereabouts of her spy circuit's wireless operator and another British officer, she not only saved the lives of other agents but enabled them to continue their work for the Resistance. These three men were amazing spies who helped to . The medal was awarded after medical records and eyewitness testimony supported her case. After the war and his separation from Odette he married Carla Schmidt (19212004). Sansom's initial objective was to contact the French Resistance on the French Riviera, and then move to Auxerre in Burgundy to establish a safe house for other agents. Born November 15, 1891 Who Can Benefit From Diaphragmatic Breathing? Encyclopedia.com. At one point toward the end of the war, she witnessed an instance of cannibalism of a dead inmate by starving prisoners. Odette accompanied him. Colonel Henri was a German officer who claimed he wished to work for the allies. 19471956 God bless you and your children. "Tortured French Woman Decorated by George VI," in The New York Times. Winston Churchill, prime minister of Great Britain, proclaimed his faith that France would be free once more, and Charles de Gaulle, leader of the Free French in London, encouraged his nation to fight back. tortured by the Gestapo she had all her toenails pulled out. 5 Non-Christmas Movies to Watch This Holiday, Best Online Games to Play with your Friends, 12 tips for creating visual content on social media. In the series Billie (Sarah Shahi) is a housewife living in Connecticut, who has just given birth to her . All were terrific spies and each played a key role in deceiving the Germans about D-Day. A French agent working for the British during World War II, Odette Sansom left three small daughters to join the Resistance in 1942. She was taught self-defence, Morse code, and how to resist interrogation. 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. Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors. "If I had courage, it was my grandfather's," Sansom told a London Sunday Times interviewer in 1990. Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. She is named on panel 26. It could have been deleted, moved, or it never existed at all. She was captured six months later and imprisoned in Fresne, the Gestapo prison in Paris. Your email address will not be published. Some had only rags to cover their feet as they were forced onto the frozen mud. (February 22, 2023). They summoned her to Avenue Foch 14 times, always pressing her for the whereabouts of SPINDLEs radio operator and the hideout of another circuit leader. Szabo, George Cross. Like her colleagues in the SOE, she signed up for the war knowing that arrest (and execution) was a very real possibilitya fate that awaited almost one in two for F Section (France) couriers. Peter Churchill survived the war but Rabinovitch was executed by the Gestapo in 1944. "The Last Days of Auschwitz, 50 Years Later: Untold Stories From the Death Camp," in Newsweek. Standing angrily over her, he said, "We Germans have no need to excuse ourselves to subject races. "Sansom, Odette (19121995) Acting largely alone, the relentless German arrested over one hundred Allied agents, including Czerniawski and Sansom. She died in 1995 aged 83. On 16th April, 1943, Sansom and Churchill were arrested by Hugo Carve Her Name With Pride Film based on the life of Violette Szabo. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1980. [35], She served as a technical advisor on a film on her fellow SOE agent Violette Szabo, Carve Her Name with Pride. After a lengthy fire-fight Violette was eventually captured. * The request timed out and you did not successfully sign up. Men and women from the SOE would work within occupied nations, disabling factories, wrecking power houses, and severing lines of communication. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1993. Encyclopedias almanacs transcripts and maps, Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Odette: The Story of a British Agent. "Now would you care to tell me Arnaud's address?," the interrogator asked. [5] She adopted an attitude of defiance, and found that this resulted in a degree of respect by her captors and helped her survive the imprisonment mentally. Most online reference entries and articles do not have page numbers. Including; Hitler, Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt, Truman, Emperor Hirohito, Eisenhower, Rommel and De Gaulle. During her interview, Sansom was puzzled by the questions and by how much the British knew about her. French-born Odette Sansom worked undercover in France during the Second World War. "I resent your hands on me or on my clothes," she said. She described it as a "kind of bargaining. "I have nothing to say," Sansom replied. An unexpected error has occurred with your sign up. Geoffrey Hallowesm. Sansom was shocked by the lax attitude towards security by her French supporters. [11], Meanwhile, in Paris in mid-March, spy-catcher Hugo Bleicher, an Abwehr counterintelligence officer, arrested Marsac, persuading him and another Carte associate, Roger Bardet, that he was an anti-Nazi German colonel and that they should work together. A specially trained inner core of Nazis, hand-picked by Heinrich Himmler, interrogated her repeatedly. Sansom wassent to Ravensbrck concentration camp, Germany, in July 1944. In 1930, Odette met Roy Sansom, an Englishman who was the son of a family friend. 19561995 she married Roy Sansom, a hotel worker, in 1931. Back in her cell, Sansom ripped her prison cloth into strips to bind her feet. Odette Sansom (1912 - 1995) - a French/British spy who worked as an SOE operative in occupied France. On April 28, 1945, on her 33rd birthday, Sansom was released from Ravensbrck weighing less than 90 pounds. Before spies left England, Scotland Yard detectives scrutinized their clothing. After four months of agonizing indecision over leaving her three children, and still feeling unqualified, she accepted. Despite all this, Sansom didn't want fame. August 21, 1946. When she did, he pulled back the material and pressed a red-hot poker to her spine. Resistance groupswere activethroughout German-occupied France and made important contributions to the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944. Please make him your prisoner." 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. //
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