Violette Szabo

Violette Szabo
Nickname	Louise (also: La P'tite Anglaise)
Born	26 June 1921 (1921-06-26) Paris, France
Died	5 February 1945 (1945-02-06) (aged 23) Ravensbrück concentration camp, Germany
Allegiance	United Kingdom, France
Service/branch	Special Operations Executive, First Aid Nursing Yeomanry
Years of service	1941-1945 (FANY) / 1942/43-1945 (SOE)
Rank	Ensign
Unit	F Section
Awards	George Cross   Croix de Guerre   Croix de Guerre

Violette Reine Elizabeth Bushell Szabo, GC, (26 June 1921 – c. 5 February 1945) was a Second World War French-British secret agent.

Early life and marriage

She was born Violette Reine Elizabeth Bushell in Paris, France on 26 June 1921, the second child of a French mother and an English taxi-driver father, who had met during World War I. The family moved to London and she attended school in Brixton until the age of 14. At the start of the Second World War, she was working in the Bon Marché department store in Brixton on the perfume counter.

Violette met Etienne Szabo, a French officer of Hungarian descent, at the Bastille Day parade in London in 1940. They married on 21 August 1940 after a whirlwind 42-day romance. Violette was 19, Etienne was 31. Shortly after the birth of their only child, Tania, Etienne died from chest wounds at the Battle of El Alamein in October 1942. He had never seen his daughter. It was Etienne's death that made Violette, having already joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service in 1941, decide to offer her services to the British Special Operations Executive (SOE).

Allied spy

Training and first mission

After an assessment for fluency in the French language and a series of interviews, she was inducted into Special Operations Executive. She received intensive training in night and daylight navigation, escape and evasion, both Allied and German weapons, unarmed combat, demolitions, explosives, communications and cryptography. A minor accident during parachute training delayed her deployment into the field until 5th April 1944, when she was parachuted into German-occupied France, near Cherbourg. Code-named "Louise", she reorganised a French Resistance network that had been smashed by the Germans. She led the new group in sabotaging road and railway bridges. Her wireless reports to SOE headquarters on the local factories producing war materials for the Germans were extremely important in establishing Allied bombing targets. She returned to England by Lysander on 30 April 1944, landing by Lysander at RAF Tempsford, after an intense but successful first mission.

Second mission

She flew to the outskirts of Limoges, France on 7 June 1944 (immediately following D-Day) from RAF Tempsford. Immediately on arrival, she coordinated the activities of the local Maquis (led by Jacques Dufour) in sabotaging communication lines during German attempts to stem the Normandy landings.

She was a passenger in a car that raised the suspicions of German troops at an unexpected roadblock that had been set up to find Sturmbannführer Helmut Kämpfe of the Das Reich Division, who had been captured by the local resistance.

A brief gun battle ensued. Her Maquis minders escaped unscathed in the confusion. However, Szabo was captured when she ran out of ammunition, around midday on 10 June 1944, near Salon-la-Tour. Her captors were most likely from the 1st Battalion of the Deutschland Regiment. In R. J. Minney's biography, she is described as putting up fierce resistance with her Sten gun. German documents of the incident record no German injuries or casualties. A recent biography of Vera Atkins, the intelligence officer for the French section of SOE, notes that that there was a great deal of confusion about what happened to Szabo -- the story was revised four times -- and states that the Sten gun incident "was probably a fabrication".

Interrogation, torture and execution

She was transferred to the custody of the SD in Limoges, where she was interrogated for four days. From there, she was moved to Fresnes Prison in Paris, and brought to Gestapo headquarters at 84 Avenue Foch for interrogation and torture. In August 1944 she was moved to Ravensbrück concentration camp, where over 92,000 women died. There, she endured hard labour and malnutrition. She managed to help save the life of Belgian resistance courier Hortense Clews.

Violette Szabo was executed on or about 5 February 1945 and her body disposed of in the crematorium. She was 23 years old.

Three other women members of the SOE were also executed at Ravensbrück: Denise Bloch, Cecily Lefort, and Lilian Rolfe. Of the SOE's 55 female agents, 13 were killed in action or died in Nazi concentration camps.

Awards and honours

George Cross and its ribbon bar

Szabo was the second woman to be awarded the George Cross, bestowed posthumously on 17 December 1946. The citation was published in the London Gazette and read:

St. James's Palace, S.W.1. 17th December, 1946

The KING has been graciously pleased to award the GEORGE CROSS to: —

Violette, Madame SZABO (deceased), Women's Transport Service (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry).

Madame Szabo volunteered to undertake a particularly dangerous mission in France. She was parachuted into France in April, 1944, and undertook the task with enthusiasm. In her execution of the delicate researches entailed she showed great presence of mind and astuteness. She was twice arrested by the German security authorities but each time managed to get away. Eventually, however, with other members of her group, she was surrounded by the Gestapo in a house in the south west of France. Resistance appeared hopeless but Madame Szabo, seizing a Sten-gun and as much ammunition as she could carry, barricaded herself in part of the house and, exchanging shot for shot with the enemy, killed or wounded several of them. By constant movement, she avoided being cornered and fought until she dropped exhausted. She was arrested and had to undergo solitary confinement. She was then continuously and atrociously tortured but never by word or deed gave away any of her acquaintances or told the enemy anything of any value. She was ultimately executed. Madame Szabo gave a magnificent example of courage and steadfastness.

The Croix de Guerre was awarded by the French government in 1947 and the Médaille de la Résistance in 1973. As one of the SOE agents who died for the liberation of France, Ensign Szabo is listed on the "Roll of Honor" on the Valençay SOE Memorial in the town of Valençay, in the Indre département.

Museums and memorials

Violette Szabo's Home with blue plaque

The Violette Szabo GC Museum is located in the cottage in Wormelow Tump, Herefordshire, that Violette's English cousins formerly owned, and that Violette would visit before the war to enjoy walks in the surrounding hills. She also stayed at the farm while she was recuperating from her ankle injury and between her two missions to France. Tania Szabo attended the museum's opening in 2000, as did Virginia McKenna, Leo Marks and members of SOE.

The Jersey War Tunnels has a permanent exhibition room dedicated to Violette Szabo.

The Royal College of Music offers an annual award called the Violette Szabo GC Memorial Prize for pianists who accompany singers. The current holder is James Southall.

There is a mural dedicated to Violette Szabo in Stockwell, South London, painted in 2001: Stockwell War Memorial, Stockwell Road. Painted on the exterior of the entrance to a deep level shelter, this mural was executed by Brian Barnes (with the assistance of children from Stockwell Park School). It features Stockwell's famous people such as Violette Szabo and Vincent Van Gogh. It also commemorates the local people who gave their life in the war. This mural was listed in Time Out as one of London's top ten murals.

A blue plaque commemorating Violette Szabo can be found in Burnley Road in Stockwell, on the wall of the house where she grew up.

In 2008, a bronze bust of Szabo by sculptor Karen Newman was unveiled at the Albert Embankment of the River Thames, opposite Lambeth Palace.

Book

Her daughter, Tania Szabo, wrote an exhaustive and careful reconstruction of her two missions in 1944 into the then most dangerous areas in France with flashbacks to her growing up. Author Jack Higgins wrote the foreword and US-French radio-operator, Jean-Claude Guiet, who had accompanied her on the mission in the Limousin, wrote the introduction. On 15 November 2007, at the launch of the book, Young Brave and Beautiful: The Missions of Special Operations Executive Agent Lieutenant Violette Szabo, at The Jersey War Tunnels, the Lieutenant Governor of Jersey said of her, "She's an inspiration to those young people today doing the same work with the risk of the same dangers". Odette Churchill GC said, "She was the bravest of us all."

In popular culture

Her wartime activities in German Occupied France were also dramatised in the film Carve Her Name with Pride, starring Virginia McKenna and based on the 1956 book of the same name by R. J. Minney. During her time as an agent in the SOE, she met Leo Marks, codes officer of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), who gave her what is now thought of as the definitive Second World War poem code, The Life That I Have.

In 2009, Replay Studios released the stealth action video game Velvet Assassin, in which the player controls a character named Violette Summer based on Szabo. The game story is fiction.

References

• Szabó, Tania (2007) Young Brave and Beautiful: the Missions of Special Operations Executive Agent, Lieutenant Violette Szabó, George Cross, Croix de Guerre avec Etoile de bronze, St Helier: distributed by Tania Szabó, ISBN 1-905095-20-1. 496 pp, index, bibliography, plus 30 pages of illustrations.
• Minney, R. J. (1956) Carve her Name with Pride: the Story of Violette Szabo. London: Newnes
• Ottaway, Susan (2003) Violette Szabo: The Life That I Have. Pen & Sword Books ISBN 0-85052-976-X

External links

• Violette Szabó GC site built by Tania Szabo, the daughter of Violette
• Violette Szabo Museum
• Violette Szabo GC Museum
• Special Operations Executive Agents in France - Profile of Violette Szabo
• Special Forces Roll Of Honour website
• Carve Her Name with Pride at the Internet Movie Database
• Les Fernandez - Daily Telegraph obituary of the man who trained Violette Szabo