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While
searching for a book by George Millar "Road to Resistance"
in my local library, I came across a book by Rita
Kramer called
"Flames in the Field"
Having read this with great interest and great sadness, I was drawn
to the heroic bravery of the four women who so young left the safety
of their families, their homes, and their country, to courageously
face the might of an evil enemy, not knowing when or if they would
ever return……I was so moved by the story I decided to
visit
the only extermination camp in France, and to leave my own tribute
to those four very brave S.O.E. agents and those loyal members of
the Resistance that were murdered there.
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four women agents after spending many months
on active duty in enemy occupied France
fighting and evading the Germans, were all eventually
captured by the Gestapo
and taken to the dreaded Avenue Foch (Gestapo
HQ)
in
Paris for
interrogation. There
they waited, feeling a certain dread as to what fate lay before them.
Later they were transfered to the notorious Fresnes prison and discovered
that four other female agents had also
been
imprisoned there. |
Vera Leigh (Simone) - Andree
Borrel (Denise) - Sonia Olschanezky (Suzanne) - Diana Rowden (Paulette) |
While
there the women managed to communicate with each other although
this was almost impossible as they were all being held in solitary
confinement.
The
instructions came direct from Berlin that four of the agents from
Fresnes, were to be delivered to Struthof
for "special treatment" via the prison at Karlsruhe.
On
the 6th July 1944 four of the women were awakened and ordered to get
ready for transportation. With very few possessions they boarded a
truck and were driven sixty miles through Strasbourg to Struthof,
they arrived at about three in the afternoon, and were immediately
marched between SS guards down the steps in the middle of the camp
to a block of cells next to the crematorium, and locked up separately. |
The
four other S.O.E. agents who had been with Andree, Sonia, Diana and
Vera in Karlsruhe prison had also been transferred, one was sent to
Ravensbruck the other three to Dachau, where they were to meet another
S.O.E. agent who was imprisoned there. These four were soon to become
victims of the Nazi regime, early one morning in September 1944 they
were taken to an execution spot in the Dachau camp and ordered to
kneel down in pairs, and holding hands an SS guard came forward and
callously shot them all in the back of the head, with great courage
and dignity they all died "heroines".
The
fate of the women prisoners that were brought to Struthof-Natzweiler,
was soon to become evident, and on that most terrifying night of July
6th 1944 they were to face the wrath of the S.S camp doctor who finally
subjected them to a most horrendous, brutal death, with a deadly injection
of a caustic disinfectant. Then, three of the bodies were burnt in
the oven, and the fourth girl partly regained consciousness, and was
pushed into the oven alive, and horrifically burnt to death.
These eight most brave S.O.E.agents, had given the supreme sacrifice..........Their
own lives!!! |
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