Vera Atkins
Vera Atkins CBE (born June 15, 1908 in Galatz , † June 24, 2000 in Hastings ) was a British intelligence officer during the Second World War.
Life
Vera Atkins was born as Vera Maria Rosenberg in a Jewish family in Romania, Rudolf Vrba was her cousin. Her father was Maximilian Rosenberg, who was born in Kassel in 1874 . Atkins is the maiden name of her South African- born mother, which she later adopted as her own family name. In 1933 she emigrated with her family to Great Britain and in 1935 to France. After graduating from school in Lausanne, she began studying at the Sorbonne in Paris.
In May 1940 Atkins returned to Great Britain and in February 1941 he joined the France division of the British Intelligence Service Special Operations Executive . In August 1944 she was promoted to major in the women's corps of the RAF ( Women's Auxiliary Air Force ).
During her work at the SOE French Section , she looked after more than 400 agents who prepared them for deployment in the enemy rear.
After the victory of the anti-Hitler coalition , she went to Germany with the aim of determining the whereabouts of 118 agents from Section F who had disappeared during the war. She was able to locate all but one. 39 of these 118 agents were women, 13 of whom did not survive the mission. These included: Violette Szabo , Denise Bloch , Cecily Lefort , Andrée Borrel , murdered in Natzweiler concentration camp , and Lilian Rolfe , who were murdered in Ravensbrück concentration camp . Noor Inayat Khan was shot in the Dachau concentration camp .
Honors
- In 1987 she was appointed commander of the Legion of Honor .
- Commander of the Order of the British Empire
- Croix de guerre
literature
- Sarah Helm: A Life in Secrets: The Story of Vera Atkins and the Lost Agents of SOE. London 2005 ISBN 0-316-72497-1 review ( Memento of December 27, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
- William Stevenson: Spymistress: The Life of Vera Atkins, the Greatest Female Secret Agent of World War II. Arcade Publishing 2006 ISBN 978-1-55970-763-3
- Michael Richard Daniell Foot: Des Anglais dans la Résistance. Le Service Secret Britannique d'Action (SOE) en France 1940-1944. , 2008, ISBN 978-2-84734-329-8
- Arne Molfenter, Rüdiger Strempel: Towards the Darkness. DuMont publishing house
Web links
- Rüdiger Strempel and Arne Molfenter: The real Miss Moneypenny , Spiegel Online October 28, 2015
- SOE biography
- Vera ATKINS (1908-2000) at the National Archives
- The Women of the Special Operations Executive
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Atkins, Vera |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Rosenberg, Vera Maria (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British intelligence officer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 15, 1908 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Galatz |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 24, 2000 |
| Place of death | Hastings |