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

Khalid Elhassan August 10, 2020 34 min

34. Courageous to the End

georges blind the smiling resistance fighter — Georges Blind’s death defying smile. Reddit

Literally smiling in the face of death has to be one of the coolest and manliest ways to shuffle off the mortal coil. However, unbeknownst to Georges Blind, he was not to die that day. It was a mock execution, used by the Germans as psychological torture in an attempt to scare him into snitching on his resistance comrades.

The building against whose corner Georges Blind was placed for his execution still exists today. WWII Forums

Blind refused to snitch, so on October 24^th, 1944, he was sent to Dachau concentration camp, where he arrived on the 29^th. From Dachau, he was sent to Auschwitz, arriving there on November 24^th. There, he was killed by lethal injection on November 30^th, 1944. Georges Blind was posthumously promoted to sergeant in the French Forces of the Interior. He was also posthumously awarded a Croix de Guerre, a Medaille Militaire, a Resistance Medal, and an Honor Medal for Fighters for exceptional services.

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.