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These World War II Heroines Should be Household Names

Khalid Elhassan August 15, 2022 37 min

13. The Teenage Resistance Heroine Who Saved Jewish Children from the Holocaust

Resistance Facts - Charlotte Sorkine — Charlotte Sorkine. Washington Jewish Week

As part of her Resistance work, Charlotte Sorkine stashed and transported weapons and money, often under the Nazis’ noses, and created and supplied fake documents. She also guided fugitives to the French border and safety beyond in Switzerland or Spain. In addition to escorting freedom fighters and political opponents of the Nazis and their French puppet regime, her charges included many Jewish children. She also took part in direct action, and on one occasion, planted a bomb that went off in a Paris movie theater where SS members were gathered. She also fought in the 1944 Paris Uprising that preceded that city’s liberation.

For her wartime services, Charlotte received numerous awards. They included the Médaille de la Résistance, the Croix du Combattant Volontaire de la Resistance, the Médaille des Services Volontaires Dans la France Libre, and the War Commemoration Medal. After the war, Charlotte resumed her education, and studied psychology at the Sorbonne and art history at the Louvre, as well as languages. She sailed to America to further her mental health studies, and to examine a model health treatment center in Kansas for replication in Paris. During a rough crossing of the Atlantic, she met and befriended Ernest Hemingway. After her return to France, she got married in a ceremony attended by her Resistance compatriots, and settled into family life and a rewarding professional career.

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.