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CHACAL
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Info request.

#1

Post by CHACAL » 18 May 2005, 20:01

I did a search but didnt come up with anything.Anyway is there a thread or does anyone have any info/links about the British SOE operative Violet Szabo,who was wounded in a firefight with elements of the Das Reich div on their way to the fighting in Normandy and subsequently shot in a KZ.Thanks.

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Michael Miller
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#2

Post by Michael Miller » 18 May 2005, 20:31

Dan Reinbold's "Das Reich" website has a page devoted to Mme. Szabo at http://www.dasreich.ca/szabo.html

Best,
~ Mike


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#3

Post by David Thompson » 18 May 2005, 21:11

From E.H. Cookridge, Set Europe Ablaze, Thomas Y. Crowell Company, New York: 1967 [British title Inside the S.O.E.], pp. 201-204:
Violette

Gay, very pretty, and intelligent, a sportive tomboy, Violette Szabo had an unusual hobby for a young girl: shooting. After a long day at training school shadowing ersatz "Gestapo spies," she and Lieutenant Cyril Watney

[ 201 ]

would visit shooting galleries in London, where Violette would hit the bull's-eye every time and win cigarettes to replenish their ration.

When she was ready for the field, Staunton asked Colonel Buckmaster if she could go as his courier to Rouen. The Lysander operation was fixed for mid-March; but just before their departure a signal arrived from a reseau connected with Andre Malraux, reporting that his brother Claude, Pepe Newman, and many members of the Rouen circuit had been captured. Buckmaster canceled the flight; Staunton might be compromised if he returned to Rouen now. Instead, it was agreed that Violette should reconnoiter in Rouen while he waited for her in Paris. They landed from a Lysander on 15 April near Chateaudun and went to Paris. Next morning Violette traveled to Rouen equipped with papers in the name of Corinne Leroy and a permit to enter the prohibited coastal zone. She found Rouen plastered with Gestapo posters offering a reward for the capture of "two wanted terrorists" and bearing fairly good photographs of Staunton and Bob Mortier. It was clear that a traitor had been at work. Apart from Claude Malraux and Newman some eighty members of the circuit had been arrested. Staunton sent a report to Baker Street and Colonel Buckmaster ordered him and Violette to return to London. A Lysander was sent on 30 April to pick them up in a field near Chartres.

Back in London Staunton was more determined than ever to return to the field. But weather was extremely bad in May and he had to wait for the June moon. Bob Mortier, now recovered from his injuries, also begged to be sent back. After much heart-searching Buckmaster finally agreed that Staunton, Bob, and Violette should go as a team to the Limoges area to take charge of a maquis group whose SOE instructor had been assigned elsewhere for D day. An American OSS officer, Lieutenant Jean Guyet, the fourth member, was Staunton's radio operator. The four were parachuted during the night of 6–7 June—D day plus 1—and only on the airfield did they hear that the invasion had started. They were dropped near Sussac in Haute-Vienne, in the heart of the Limousin maquis—which numbered some two thousand members—and not very far from the area where Cyril Watney, Violette's shooting-gallery companion, had landed in January.

The leader of the local maquis was Anastasie, actually Jacques Dufour, whose daring sabotage actions had elicited a Gestapo reward for his capture. He had six hundred men, but not all obeyed his command. Some were local farmers and landworkers; others, Communist workers from Limoges, banded together in FTP units. There were Spanish Republicans—refugees of the civil war—and Polish miners from the north. It was not easy for Staunton to effect some order among the motley crew; most were neither trained nor properly armed. The only bright news was that 185 gendarmes from Haute-

[ 202 ]

Vienne and Creuze had joined the maquisard when they learned of the Allied landing.

Two days after their arrival, the SOE officers heard that advance units of the Das Reich SS Panzer Division, commanded by SS General Heinz Lammerding, moving from Toulouse to reinforce the German army in Normandy, were only twenty or thirty miles to the south of Staunton's headquarters.

The maquis leader declared: "The Germans will never get through here!"

Staunton warned him that their small and poorly armed units could hardly equal a crack panzer division of the Waffen SS. Anastasie agreed that reinforcements should be requested from other maquis units in the Correze and Creuze, and that the regional FFI commander in Chateauroux should be alerted.

Violette accompanied Anastasie in a car. Near the village of Salon-le-Tour they were ambushed by an advance unit of the Das Reich Division. They ran across a field toward a farm. Violette fell and wrenched her ankle, which she had hurt in a parachute jump at Ringway. Anastasie carried her for a stretch with the soldiers in pursuit and firing. Violette told Anastasie to let her go and save his own life. The maquis leader hesitated; finally he ran to the farm. The farmer hid him under a pile of logs while the Germans searched the place. Violette took cover behind a cluster of trees in a corn-field and for two hours held off some four hundred Germans and two tanks, until she ran out of ammunition for her Sten gun. The farm people saw several German soldiers fall, though it was never established how many Violette killed or wounded. Finally she was overwhelmed and taken to Limoges prison.

After the Germans left, Anastasie,8 nearly suffocating under the logs, freed himself, hurried to Staunton's headquarters at Croiselle, and told him of Violette's capture. Staunton immediately planned a rescue operation. He and Bob Mortier went to Limoges and watched the prison for several days. They found that twice a day Violette was led from the prison to the Gestapo office nearby, apparently for interrogation. Staunton decided to kidnap her on one of these walks. The rescue operation was staged for 16 June, six days after her capture.

Bob Mortier and four Resistance men were to come in a car and snatch Violette while Staunton and six heavily armed men—all volunteers—were to provide cover and, if need be, shoot it out with the SS guards. But at dawn on the day set for the rescue, Violette was taken from Limoges to Paris.

______________________________________________________
8 Anastasie (Jacques Dufour) was a brave man. He played his part in the liberation of Limoges and the Limousin, enlisted in 1945 in the French army. He was sent to Indochina and was killed there a year later.

[ 203 ]

Three Women Are Murdered

At Avenue Foch, Violette Szabo was interrogated by Kieffer and his assist-ants, but she refused to talk. On 8 August 1944 Violette and two other SOE women, Denise Bloch (a French Jew who had escaped from France, joined SOE as Danielle Williams, and arrived in March 1944 to be Robert Benoist's radio operator) and Lilian Rolfe (who in April 1944 had become a courier to a reseau at Orleans, headed by George Wilkinson) were put on a train carrying a large group of British and French prisoners—including SOE agents—to Germany.

Violette, Denise, and Lilian were taken to Ravensbruck, the concentration camp in the marshes of the Mecklenburg lake district. Built in 1939 for 7,000 prisoners, it contained 40,000 women from every country of Nazi-subjugated Europe when the three girls arrived. They remained there for three weeks, then were sent to Torgau, a labor camp, where conditions were much better and where the three began to plan their escape. But some weeks later they were returned to Ravensbruck. On 26 January 1945, when the Allied armies had already penetrated Germany and the Russians had captured Warsaw and entered Eastern Prussia—Violette Szabo, Denise Bloch, and Lilian Rolfe were taken from their cells to the yard behind the crematorium. Lilian, who suffered from lung trouble, and Denise, who had been badly manhandled, were carried on stretchers; only Violette walked.9

The camp commander, SS Sturmbann-Fuhrer Fritz Suhren, read out an order from the RSHA in Berlin that the three prisoners "were condemned to death," and then ordered SS Schar-Fuhrer Schulte to carry out the executions. Schulte shot each girl from behind in the neck. The camp doctor, SS Sturm-Fuhrer Dr. Trommer, certified their deaths. The bodies were immediately cremated.

By the time Violette was shot at Ravensbruck, the war in France had been over for several months. Staunton, Bob Mortier, and their Resistance comrades of the Limoges circuit had contributed their part to the liberation of France. The Das Reich Division was cut to pieces by the FFI on its progress toward Normandy. In July 1944 the situation at Limoges and the Limousin had become extremely serious, partly because of disagreements between leaders of Communist and Gaullist groups and partly because 4,000 heavily armed members of the milice, the pro-Nazi organization formed by Pierre Laval's security chief, Joseph Darnand, were in the area. The milice, who had used their auxiliary police powers to terrorize the population, knew they would have to fight for their lives when FFI units laid siege to Limoges.

__________________________
9 The scene was described by an eyewitness, Mrs. Julie Barry, who survived her imprisonment.
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CHACAL
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#4

Post by CHACAL » 18 May 2005, 21:53

Thanks guys,thats what i was looking for.

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CHACAL
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#5

Post by CHACAL » 19 May 2005, 14:42

Reading the link supplied by you Michael is very interesting to see how the post war film used "Artistic liscence"in its portrayal of her capture.
Wonder what became of Major Kampfe ?....... 8O

Stuart1965
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Violette Szabo

#6

Post by Stuart1965 » 10 Feb 2019, 20:23

Michael Miller wrote:
18 May 2005, 20:31
Dan Reinbold's "Das Reich" website has a page devoted to Mme. Szabo at http://www.dasreich.ca/szabo.html

Best,
~ Mike
Hello Mike, I am new here and doing some research on Violette Szabo, I have tried this link but it appears to not be working. Can you help out in any way please. Most appreciated.

Stuart Outre

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