← Back to the front page

A Ballerina Who Stabbed an SS Guard With a Stiletto and Other Historic Rebels

Khalid Elhassan August 10, 2020 34 min

35. The Resistance Member Who Smiled in the Face of Death

Georges Blind in his fireman uniform before the war. Musee de la Resistance

Georges Blind (1904 – 1944) was a French fireman, ambulance driver, and resistance member from Belfort. He became famous when a photo surfaced of him smiling at a German firing squad. Blind took his first steps towards joining the resistance just a few months into the German occupation, when he and others sheltered a statue of Edith Cavell, a WWI heroine executed by the Germans.

Georges Blind smiling in the face of death. Quora

He eventually became a resistance courier, using his ambulance to transport fugitives on the run from the Nazis, weapons, information, and clandestine publications. He was arrested by the Germans on October 14^th, 1944, and jailed. At some point between October 15^th and 23^rd, he was placed before a German firing squad, and somebody took a photo that immortalized him as an anti-fascist symbol of the resistance. In it, Georges Blind can be seen smiling in the face of death, as German soldiers aim their rifles at him.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.