Cecily Lefort

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Cecily Lefort

Cecily Margot Lefort, née MacKenzie (born April 30, 1900 in London , † February 1945 in Ravensbrück concentration camp ) was an agent of the British intelligence service " Special Operations Executive " (SOE).

Life

In 1925 MacKenzie married the French doctor Alex Lefort, with whom she lived in Paris . The enthusiastic sailors owned a summer house on the Breton coast west of Dinard , which they made available to friends and acquaintances who were persecuted by the Germans as a hiding place after the German occupation of France in the summer of 1940. At the urging of her husband, Lefort eventually got herself to safety in England, where she volunteered for the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) and earned the rank of officer. At the end of 1942, Lefort was recruited by SOE, Section F, under the cover name "Alice" because of her good knowledge of French, to support the Resistance in France . She was supposed to work as a courier for the agent ring "Jockey" and its director, the Belgian Francis Cammaerts, in the area around Montélimar . On the night of June 17, 1943, she landed together with SOE agents Noor Inayat Khan and Diana Rowden with parachutes near Le Mans and traveled from there to the south of France alone. However, in September she was arrested at a meeting with a Resistance member, but despite brutal abuse at the Gestapo headquarters in Paris , she did not betray anyone. Eventually she was imprisoned in Fresnes prison in Paris . From there she was probably deported to the Ravensbrück concentration camp in January 1944 . A year later she was so weakened as a result of the prison conditions that she was " selected " and transferred to the death zone of the so-called youth protection camp. There she died after a short time under unexplained circumstances.

Honors

Great Britain posthumously honored Lefort as a Royal Air Force officer on a plaque at the Runnymede Memorial in Surrey . She was awarded the Croix de guerre by France and as one of 91 men and 13 women who died in the service of SOE for the freedom of France, she is honored at the SOE memorial in Valençay in the Indre department .

literature

  • MRD Foot: SOE. The Special Operations Executive 1940-1946 , London 1984
  • David Stafford: Secret Agent. The True Story of the Special Operations Executive , BBC Worldwide 2000, ISBN 0-563-53734-5
  • Monika Siedentopf: Jump over enemy territory. Agents in World War II , Dtv Munich 2006, ISBN 3-423-24582-4
  • Marcus Binney: The Women who Lived for Danger: The Agents of the Special Operations Executive , 2003
  • Sarah Helm: A Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins and the Lost Agents of SOE , 2006
personal data
SURNAME Lefort, Cecily
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lefort, Cecily Margot (full name); MacKenzie, Cecily Margot (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British agent
DATE OF BIRTH April 30, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH February 1945
Place of death Ravensbrück concentration camp