Violette Szabó 1921-1944
- a brief history
While
Jersey was being held captive, barely 50 kilometres away a secret war was
being waged in France. Agents of the SOE – Special Operations Executive
– helped to organise, train and supply the underground resistance
forces. Violette Szabó was one of their bravest, executed at Ravensbrück
concentration camp aged only 23. In 1949 her seven-year-old daughter Tania
received the George Cross on her behalf. Today Tania lives in Jersey. Her
mother’s story is a tribute to the secret lives of the men and women
of the SOE2.
Born in Paris on 26 June 1921, Violette was the second child of Charles Bushell and his French wife Reine Leroy. The family moved often, spending time in France and England. Violette grew up in south London speaking French, with a love and knowledge of France.
At the age of 19 Violette met and married Sergeant Major Etienne Szabó of the French Foreign Legion. Their brief honeymoon ended with her husband’s return to West Africa and they would meet again only once more before his death at the Battle of El Alamein.
Tania was born in June 1942 and would never know her father. Violette’s ability to speak French, combined with a natural instinct to avenge the death of her husband, made her attractive to the SOE which recruited her in August 1943. Having passed selection, she underwent a series of rigorous training courses to prepare her for the dangerous life of a secret agent. She was enlisted into the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) to provide a cover for her activities about which her family would be unaware until after the war.
Her first mission for SOE’s French (F) section took place in early April 1944 when she and her circuit organiser, Phillipe Liewer (aka Major Geoffrey Staunton, Salesman, Clement, Hamlet) were air landed in France by a Lysander of 161 Squadron RAF. Liewer had created the ‘Salesman’ resistance circuits in Rouen and Le Havre but the circuit had been broken up by the Germans and a large number of arrests made. It was Liewer and Violette’s mission to determine the extent of the damage done. At the end of April, the mission complete, they were extracted by Lysander and returned to England. For the manner in which she conducted herself on this mission, Violette was rewarded with promotion to the commissioned rank of Ensign (Second Lieutenant) in the FANY.
Her second mission, Operation Salesman, began a month later, a matter of days before D-Day. Violette, codenamed Louise, was the courier in a four-man team that was tasked with coordinating the sabotage activities of the various maquis groups in the Haute-Vienne and Corrèze departments of the Limousin. Her organiser was again Phillipe Liewer (Hamlet) and the rest of the team was made up of a demolitions expert and weapons trainer, Robert Maloubier (aka Lieutenant Robert Mortier, Paco, Clothaire) and a wireless operator, Jean Guiet (Virgile) who was an American OSS Lieutenant on secondment to F Section.
In the early hours of 8 June 1944, after two previous attempts had failed,
they parachuted from an American ‘Carpetbagger’3 B-24D ‘Liberator’
onto a drop zone just outside the village of Sussac near Limoges. The next
two
days were spent consolidating their position and preparing to meet the leaders
of the various factions of the maquis.
On 9 June, Violette was told by Liewer that she would be required to go
to Pompadour the following day to establish contact and set up a meeting
with one such leader, Jacques Poirier (aka Nestor). She would set off by
car for at least part of the 50 kilometre journey but needed to take her
bicycle for her return.
Unbeknownst to the team, the leading elements of the 2nd SS Panzer Division, ‘Das Reich’4, had reached the area of Limoges on their move north to reinforce the German defences in Normandy. They had been harassed throughout their journey by bands of maquis and had been considerably delayed. On the night of 9 June a popular senior officer of the Division, Major Helmut Kämpfe was captured and executed by maquisards, provoking a frenzy of German patrolling activity and road blocks.
At about 9.30 am on 10 June Violette and a young maquisard driver, Jacques Dufour (aka Anastasie) set off from Sussac in a Citroën car towards Pompadour to the south. Both were armed. En route they picked up another man, Jean Bariaud who was not carrying a weapon. Shortly afterwards, near the town of Salon-la-Tour they ran into a German roadblock that had been set up as part of the German operation to recover Major Kämpfe.
In the ensuing gun battle both men got away but Violette, who gave covering fire during their withdrawal, was eventually captured. She spent the night of 10 June in Gestapo Headquarters in Limoges. That afternoon elements of the SS Division murdered nearly 650 civilians in the village of Oradour-sur-Glane just 20 kilometres away. From Limoges she was quickly transferred to Fresnes prison in Paris from where, in early August 1944, she began her two and a half week journey to the concentration camp at Ravensbrück.
Violette suffered five months of hard labour and a bitter Eastern European winter before being taken to a small square where, having been made to kneel down, she was executed with a single shot to the back of her neck. With her died two other very brave SOE F Section agents, Denise Bloch and Lilian Rolfe.
On 17 December 1946 the posthumous award of a George Cross (GC) to ‘Violette, Madame Szabó’ was announced in The London Gazette. The GC is the UK's highest award for bravery by a civilian or a military person where the award of the Victoria Cross (VC) is not applicable. In order of precedence, the GC is second only to the VC. As no person has won both awards, they can be considered as equals. Violette had already been awarded the Croix de Guerre 1939 – 1945 with Silver Star for her courage during the action in which she was captured.
Jersey War Tunnels