Sonia Olschanezky

Sonia Olschanezky

Sonia Olschanezky (born December 25, 1923 in Chemnitz ; † July 6, 1944 in the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp ) was an agent of the British special operations executive (SOE).

Life

Sonia Olschanezky's father Eli Olschanezky, who came from Odessa , had met his German wife Helen while studying chemical engineering in Leipzig and married in 1916. In Chemnitz, where two sons and daughter Sonia were born, he worked as a representative of a stocking factory. In the mid-1920s, he was appointed head of the Bucharest factory . After financial disputes with the Romanian partners, the family moved to Paris in 1930 , where Sonia Olschanezky attended a lyceum and received ballet training in order to pursue a career on stage. After the German occupation of France in the summer of 1940, she was no longer engaged because she was Jewish , so she had to work as a housemaid. Through her employer, she met the Swiss businessman Jacques Weil, who worked for the Resistance , and joined him.

Sonia Olschanezky was arrested for the first time in June 1942, when the arrests and deportations of French Jews began in Vichy on German orders and in cooperation with the Pétain government . She was detained at Drancy Assembly Camp until her mother managed to obtain her release. With the help of Jewish friends who made coats for the German Wehrmacht in their fur factory , she received false papers that identified her daughter as a "war economically valuable" worker in the fur factory.

Agent activity

In 1943 Sonia Olschanezky joined the SOE agent ring "Juggler" (in France also "Robin") under the cover name "Tanja" with Weil, which carried out sabotage in the area around Chalons-sur-Marne . "Juggler" was an offshoot of the SOE agent ring "Physician" headed by Francis Suttill , code name "Prosper". With forged papers in the name of "Suzanne Ouvrard", Olschanezky provided courier services for the SOE agents and the Resistance. Although most of the members of the “Physician” ring fell into the hands of the Germans in the summer of 1943 as a result of betrayal, Olschanezky remained undiscovered for half a year.

On January 21, 1944, she was arrested at a meeting in Paris with an alleged SOE agent - in reality an employee of the German Security Service (SD). After numerous interrogations and abuse at the SD headquarters on Avenue Foch , she was imprisoned in Fresnes prison in Paris . On May 12, 1944, a truck brought Sonia Olschanezky and seven other SOE agents held in Fresnes, Yolande Beekman , Andrée Borrel , Madeleine Damerment , Vera Leigh , Eliane Plewman , Diana Rowden and Odette Sansom , to the prison in Karlsruhe , where they served as so-called “ protective prisoners ” were held in solitary confinement. On July 6th, Sonia Olschanezky, Andrée Borrel, Vera Leigh and Diana Rowden were deported to the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in Alsace . Each received a fatal phenol injection that same evening . Their bodies were burned.

Honors

In the memorial of the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp, a plaque commemorates the murder of Sonia Olschanezky and her three companions.

literature

• Marcus Binney: The Women who lived for Danger: The Agents of the Special Operations Executive. 2003.
• MRD Foot: SOE. The Special Operations Executive 1940-1946. London 1984.
• Sarah Helm: A Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins and the lost Agents of SOE. 2006.
• 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 .
• Antony M. Webb (Ed.): Trial of Wolfgang Zeuss et al. (The Natzweiler Trial). (= War Crime Trials, Volume V.) London 1949.