Odette Sansom

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Odette Sansom, photo from 1946

Odette Marie Celine Sansom , née Brailly GC , MBE (born April 28, 1912 in Amiens , † March 13, 1995 in Walton-on-Thames ) was an agent of the British Special Operations Executive (SOE). She received one of the highest British orders of merit for her commitment.

biography

As a child, Odette Sansom lost her father, who was killed near Verdun in the First World War in 1918 . She developed polio at the age of seven , spent a year blind and an additional year immobile. At the age of 18 she met the British businessman and hotelier Roy Sansom in Boulogne-sur-Mer , whom she married in 1931. The first daughter was born in 1932, two more in London in 1934 and 1936 after the family had moved there.

In 1942, Odette Sansom was recruited and trained by SOE to support the Resistance in occupied France . Since she had French as her mother tongue, she was particularly suitable for this task. In the SOE section "F" she was used as a courier and radio operator under the code name "Lise". On October 31, 1942, she landed in a small boat near Cassis , where she joined Peter M. Churchill, also an SOE agent, who ran an agent ring there.

Churchill and Sansom were later betrayed to the German occupiers by a double agent and arrested on April 16, 1943 in St. Jorioz. During interrogations by the Gestapo in Paris, they falsely stated that they were a married couple and even claimed that Churchill was the nephew of the British Prime Minister. These statements likely protected both of them from imminent execution, but not from severe torture.

After Sansom had not betrayed any other spies, she was brought to Karlsruhe with seven other SOE agents who had been captured and sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp on July 18, 1944 . Shortly before his liberation by the Red Army , the concentration camp commander Fritz Suhren fled with Sansom to the American troops in order to use Sansom's alleged relationship to Churchill for his protection. However, Sansom betrayed Suhren, who was later sentenced to death.

In 1946, Sansom testified in the Ravensbrück trial as a witness against former members of the camp crew there. In 1994, a year before her death, she visited the former concentration camp. In 1947, Odette Sansom married Peter M. Churchill after her husband died during the war. The couple divorced in 1956, and she entered into her third marriage to Geoffrey Hallowes.

In the United Kingdom, Odette Sansom was inducted into the Order of the British Empire and received the George Cross , the highest honor given to those who did not take part in direct combat. France made her a Knight of the Legion of Honor (Légion d'Honneur).

literature

  • Marcus Binney: The Women who lived for Danger: The Agents of the Special Operations Executive. 2003.
  • Bernard Cook: Odette Sansom . In: Bernard A. Cook: Women and War. A Historical Encyclopedia from Antiquity to the Present. Volume 1, 2006.
  • MRD Foot: SOE. The Special Operations Executive 1940-1946. London 1984.
  • Arne Molfenter, Rüdiger Strempel: Towards the Darkness: The true story of Vera Atkins and her courageous agents in World War II. Dumont, 2015, ISBN 978-3-8321-8887-0 .
  • Monika Siedentopf: Jump over enemy territory. Agents in World War II. Dtv 2006 ISBN 3-423-24582-4 .
  • David Stafford: Secret Agent. The True Story of the Special Operations Executive. BBC Worldwide 2000, ISBN 0-563-53734-5 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Bernard Cook: Odette Sansom. In: Bernard A. Cook: Women and War. A Historical Encyclopedia from Antiquity to the Present. Volume one, 2006, p. 518.
  2. ↑ Page no longer available , search in web archives: Odette (Marie Céline Hallowes) at www.elmbridgemuseum.org.uk@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.elmbridgemuseum.org.uk
personal data
SURNAME Sansom, Odette
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sansom-Hallowes, Odette
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Franco-British agent
DATE OF BIRTH April 28, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Amiens
DATE OF DEATH March 13, 1995
Place of death Walton-on-Thames