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The Hardcore Women of World War II Knew How to Take Care of Business

Khalid Elhassan October 19, 2020 32 min

World War II - Night Witches — Night Witches in front of a Po-2. Flite Test

30. Betrayed Into the Nazis’ Clutches

Assistant Section Officer Noor Inayat Khan survived for longer than the average six weeks life expectancy of clandestine wireless operators in Nazi-occupied France. She arrived in mid-June, 1943, and lasted for nearly four months, before she was arrested by the SD on October 13^th, 1943. She was betrayed to the Germans either by Henri Dericourt, or a female agent named Renee Garry, driven by jealousy because her love interest was attracted to Noor.

Memorial bust of Noor Inayat Khan in Gordon Square Gardens, London. Wikimedia

Captured documents the Germans to mount a counter-intelligence operation that nabbed three more SOE agents. Noor escaped her imprisonment twice, but was recaptured. After the second attempt, she was classified as a “dangerous prisoner”, and was kept in solitary confinement, with her hands and feet in shackles. Despite harsh conditions and harsher interrogations, Noor refused to give the Nazis anything. After ten months of cruel confinement, she was sent to Dachau Concentration Camp, where she was brutally beaten by an SS officer, before she was shot to death on September 13^th, 1944. Her last words according to an inmate who witnessed her death were “Liberte“. After the war, she was posthumously awarded the British George Cross, and the French Croix de Guerre.

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.