Eliane Plewman

Eliane Sophie Plewman , née Browne-Bartroli (born December 6, 1917 in Marseille ; † September 13, 1944 in Dachau concentration camp ) was an agent of the British special operations executive (SOE).

Life

The daughter of an English father and a Spanish mother was born in Marseille and grew up in France, England and Spain, so she was fluent in three languages. After graduating from school, she worked for an import company in Leicester as a foreign language correspondent, where she met her future husband Tom L. Plewman, whom she married in the summer of 1942. After the war began, Plewman worked at the British embassies in Lisbon and Madrid . Back in London in 1942 , she got a job in the Spanish Department of the British Information Department .

In the spring of 1943 Plewman was recruited because of her knowledge of French from SOE for Section F under the cover name "Gaby" to support the Resistance in France . After extensive training, she landed on the night of August 14, 1943 by parachute near Lons-le-Saunier in the Jura to support the agent ring “Monk” under its director Charles Skepper in the Marseille area as a courier . Her forged French ID was in the name of Eliane Jacqueline Prunier . Despite great difficulties, Plewman was able to fulfill her courier duties for six months, until she and other “Monk” members were arrested, interrogated and mistreated by the Gestapo on March 23 or 24, 1944 . After three weeks in Les Baumettes prison in Marseille , she was transferred to Fresnes prison in Paris .

Memorial plaque for the British SOE fighters Y. Beekman, M. Damerment, N. Inayat Khan and E. Plewman in the crematorium of the Dachau concentration camp

On May 12, 1944, a truck brought Plewman and seven other SOE agents held in Fresnes ( Yolande Beekman , Andrée Borrel , Madeleine Damerment , Vera Leigh , Sonia Olschanezky , Diana Rowden and Odette Sansom ) to the prison in Karlsruhe , where they were called " Protective prisoners " were held in solitary confinement. On the night of September 12, Plewman, Yolande Beekman, Madeleine Damerment and Noor Inayat Khan, who had been brought in the day before, were deported to the Dachau concentration camp. On the morning of September 13, 1944 - according to official reports - the four women had to kneel down on the sandy ground near the crematorium and were killed one by one with shots in the neck . Their bodies were burned.

Posthumously Eliane Plewman was honored in England with the King's Commendation for Brave Conduct medal for bravery , and France awarded her the Croix de guerre 1939–1945. She is also recognized on a plaque in the Brookwood Memorial in Surrey , on the SOE memorial in Valençay in the Indre department and on a plaque in the crematorium of the Dachau concentration camp.

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 the Second World War , Dtv 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