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Overlooked Important WWII Figures from History

Khalid Elhassan October 20, 2019 31 min

11. Hiding in a Nazi Brothel

French policemen, under Gestapo supervision, rounding up Jews in Marseille for deportation. Frank Falls Archive

On another occasion, Odette Sansom was acting as a courier between SOE and a French Resistance bigwig in another city, but the task dragged on, and she missed the last train back home. All hotels were booked, and the last thing she wanted was to get arrested for violating curfew, and risk a search that might reveal incriminating documents. So Odette hid in a whorehouse that catered exclusively to German soldiers, run by a madam sympathetic to the Resistance.

It was as safe a hideout as any, because such an establishment was the last place the authorities would expect to find an anti-Nazi. However, on that particular night, the whorehouse was raided by German military police searching for a deserter. The quick-thinking madam kept them from entering Odette’s room, by claiming it housed her niece, who was infected with smallpox.

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.