Violette Szabo

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Violette Szabo
26 June 1921(1921-06-26) – 5 February 1945
Nickname	Louise (also: La P'tite Anglaise)
Place of birth	Paris
Place of death	Ravensbrück concentration camp, Germany
Allegiance	United Kingdom, France
Service/branch	Special Operations Executive, First Aid Nursing Yeomanry
Years of service	1941-1945 (FANY) / 1942/43-1945 (SOE)
Unit	Salesman
Awards	George Cross, MBE, Croix de Guerre

Violette Reine Elizabeth Bushell Szabo, GC (26 June 1921 – c. 5 February 1945) was a World War II Allied secret agent.

Contents 1 Early life and marriage 2 Allied spy 2.1 Training and first mission 2.2 Second mission 2.3 Interrogation, torture and execution 3 Awards and honours 4 Museums and memorials 5 Book 6 In popular culture 7 References 7.1 Bibliography 8 External links

[edit] Early life and marriage

Born Violette Bushell in Paris, France to a French mother and an English taxi-driver father, the family moved to London and she attended school in Brixton until the age of 14. At the start of World War II, she was working in Bon Marché department store on the perfume counter.

Violette met Etienne Szabo, a French officer of Hungarian descent, at the Bastille Day parade in London in 1940. They married after a whirlwind 42 day romance. Violette was 19, Etienne was 31. Shortly after the birth of their only child, Tania, Etienne was killed, suffering chest wounds at the Battle of El Alamein in October 1942. Etienne had never seen his daughter. It was Etienne's death that made Violette, having already joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service in 1941, decide to offer her services to the Special Operations Executive (SOE).

[edit] Allied spy

[edit] Training and first mission

After an assessment of her fluency in French and a series of interviews, she was inducted into SOE. She received intensive training in night and daylight navigation, escape and evasion, both Allied and German weapons, unarmed combat, demolitions, explosives, communications and cryptography. A minor accident during parachute training delayed her deployment into the field until 5 April 1944, when she was parachuted into German-occupied France, near Cherbourg.

Code-named "Louise", she reorganized a French resistance network that had been smashed by the Germans. She led the new group in sabotaging road and rail bridges. Her wireless reports to SOE headquarters on the local factories producing war materials for the Germans were extremely important in establishing Allied bombing targets. She returned to England by Lysander on 30 April 1944 after an intense but successful first mission.

[edit] Second mission

She was sent back to Limoges in France on 7 June 1944, where she coordinated the local Maquis, led by Jacques Dufour, in sabotaging German communication lines.

She was a passenger in a car that raised the suspicions of German troops at an unexpected roadblock. A brief gun battle ensued. Her Maquis minders escaped unscathed in the confusion. Szabo was captured when her ammunition ran out, around mid-day on 10 June 1944, near Salon-la-Tour. Her captors were most likely from the 1st Battalion of the Deutschland Regiment. In R.J. Minney's biography, she is described as putting up fierce resistance with her Sten gun, a close range infantry weapon. German documents of the incident record no injuries or casualties to German soldiers.

[edit] Interrogation, torture and execution

She was transferred to the custody of the SD in Limoges, where she was interrogated under torture, enduring rape and brutal assaults. She was moved eight times to different locations, including Fresnes prison in Paris, Limoges prison and then in late August 1944, to Ravensbrück concentration camp, where over 92,000 women died. An SOE rescue mission to break her out of the lightly-guarded Limoges prison was planned, but a mere two hours before the attempt, she was moved to Ravensbrück. There, she endured hard labour, malnutrition, and exhaustion. She was also held three months at Königsberg (today Kaliningrad) on the Russian Front.

Violette Szabo was executed on or about 5 February 1945 and her body disposed of in the crematorium. She was just 23 years old.

Three other women members of the SOE were also executed at Ravensbrück: Denise Bloch, Cecily Lefort, and Lilian Rolfe. Of the SOE's 55 women agents, 13 were killed in action or died in the camps.

[edit] Awards and honours

Szabo was the second woman to be awarded the George Cross,^[1] bestowed posthumously on 17 December 1946. The citation was published in the London Gazette and read:^[2]

St. James's Palace, S.W.1. 17th December, 1946

The KING has been graciously pleased to award the GEORGE CROSS to: —

Violette, Madame SZABO (deceased), Women's Transport Service (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry).

Madame Szabo volunteered to undertake a particularly dangerous mission in France. She was parachuted into France in April, 1944, and undertook the task with enthusiasm. In her execution of the delicate researches entailed she showed great presence of mind and astuteness. She was twice arrested by the German security authorities but each time managed to get away. Eventually, however, with other members of her group, she was surrounded by the Gestapo in a house in the south west of France. Resistance appeared hopeless but Madame Szabo, seizing a Sten-gun and as much ammunition as she could carry, barricaded herself in part of the house and, exchanging shot for shot with the enemy, killed or wounded several of them. By constant movement, she avoided being cornered and fought until she dropped exhausted. She was arrested and had to undergo solitary confinement. She was then continuously and atrociously tortured but never by word or deed gave away any of her acquaintances or told the enemy anything of any value. She was ultimately executed. Madame Szabo gave a magnificent example of courage and steadfastness.

The Croix de Guerre was awarded by the French government in 1947 and the Médaille de la Résistance in 1973. As one of the SOE agents who died for the liberation of France, Sub-Lieutenant Szabo is listed on the "Roll of Honor" on the Valençay SOE Memorial in the town of Valençay, in the Indre département.

[edit] Museums and memorials

The Violette Szabo GC museum is in a quiet cottage in rural south Herefordshire at "Cartref", Tump Lane, Wormelow Tump, Herefordshire, HR2 8HN, England.^[3] Tania Szabo attended the museum's opening in 2000, as did Virginia McKenna. Leo Marks, various members of SOE, including some who had been involved in Violette's missions, and many other representatives of special forces units also attended to pay their respects.^[4] It is here that Violette used to visit her English cousins before the war, enjoying walks in the surrounding hills. She also visited the farm while she was recuperating from her ankle injury and between her two missions to France.

The Jersey War Tunnels has a permanent exhibition room dedicated to Violette Szabó.^[5]

The Royal College of Music offers an annual award called Violette Szabo GC Memoriam Prize for pianists who accompany singers. The current holder is James Southall.

[edit] Book

Her daughter, Tania Szabo, wrote an exhaustive and careful reconstruction of her two missions in 1944 into the then most dangerous areas in France with flashbacks to her growing up. Author Jack Higgins wrote the foreword and US-French radio-operator, Jean-Claude Guiet, who had accompanied her on the mission in the Limousin, wrote the introduction. On 15 November 2007, at the launch of the book, Young Brave and Beautiful, at The Jersey War Tunnels, the Lieutenant Governor of Jersey said of her, "She's an inspiration to those young people today doing the same work with the risk of the same dangers". Odette Churchill GC said, "She was the bravest of us all."

[edit] In popular culture

Her wartime activities in German Occupied France were also dramatised in the film Carve Her Name with Pride, starring Virginia McKenna and based on the 1956 book of the same name by R.J. Minney. During her time as an agent in the SOE, she met Leo Marks, who may have given her what is now thought of as the definitive World War II code-poem The Life That I Have.

Publisher Gamecock Media and developer Replay Studios announced that their upcoming videogame Velvet Assassin is inspired by the exploits of Szabo.^[6] Tania Szabo has not been given a copy of the game for review. It has been reported to her that the game is not representative of her mother nor her activities in occupied France.

[edit] References

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] External links