Spy Princess (31 page)

‘I was in prison in Dachau for six months and was convinced that Wassmer’s story wasn’t the truth,’ said Ott. Whatever did happen on the night of 12/13 September 1944, the only truth was that Noor and her colleagues died a horrible death in Dachau.

Berlin wanted no secret agents to survive the war and reveal the inner workings of the Nazis. Nor did they want the Allies to discover what happened to agents who had fallen into enemy hands. They knew too much about double agents, Nazi methods, and the radio game. Nearly all captured agents were deliberately killed as a matter of secret service policy.

Orders to do so came directly from Himmler in Berlin. Himmler’s decree was that the Führer’s enemies should die, but only after torture, indignity and interrogation ‘had drained from them that last shred and scintilla of evidence which should lead to the arrest of others’.
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Of the more than 200 captured agents of the two French sections of the SOE, only twenty-six lived to tell their tale. Radio operators were particular Nazi targets and very few survived. Two who did were Jack Starr, who was rescued by the Allies in Mauthausen, and Marcel Rousset, who escaped from a Gestapo prison in Paris.

Barely seven months after the execution of Noor and her colleagues, in April 1945, Dachau was liberated.

W
hen the war ended, Vera Atkins took upon herself the task of finding out what had happened to the women agents she had sent to the field. Atkins had developed a bond with each of them, getting to know about their personal lives, their families and their commitments. She travelled to Europe to unravel the story of the missing agents and interview the German officers who had captured them.

By July 1944, Noor was recorded as ‘captured’ in the SOE Battle Casualty form.
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At this time nothing definite was known except that her circuit had been blown and she had been reported as being a prisoner at 3 bis Place des États Unis, Paris. In fact, Noor was imprisoned at 84 Avenue Foch and had been moved to Pforzheim by November.

On 15 October 1944, the War Office wrote to Noor’s mother, Mrs O.R. Baker-Inayat at 4 Taviton Street, London, informing her that they had recently been out of touch with her daughter and she must be considered ‘missing’. They hoped they would soon get to know her whereabouts, and hoped to hear that she was a prisoner of war.
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The news brought complete devastation to the Inayat Khan household. Amina Begum, always frail, and with no idea that Noor had gone on a dangerous mission, was inconsolable. It was left to Vilayat and Claire to try to comfort her as best they could.

Nine months later, by July 1945, the family still knew nothing. Vilayat wrote to Vera Atkins apologising for worrying her for news of his sister: ‘So much time has now passed since the time of the collapse of Germany that I have lost in my own mind any hope of ever seeing my sister again,’ wrote Vilayat.

He continued in the same desperate vein: ‘But surely, is there so far no clue at all as to her past whereabouts? I don’t suppose there is any chance that she should still be in a D.P. [Displaced Persons] camp, since I understand that all the British have been retrieved.’

Vilayat had been asked not to make any enquiries about his sister for security reasons. He now asked: ‘Is it not possible at this stage to know something of the circumstances of her capture and the work she was doing?’
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Vera Atkins replied immediately that they were still waiting for news and the family was now free to make their own enquiries as well.

On 4 October 1945, Major General Colin Gubbins, head of the SOE, recommended that Noor Inayat Khan be appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for her bravery and devotion to duty despite the collapse of her circuit and the arrest of her organiser. At this stage the SOE also knew that Noor had had some narrow escapes from the Gestapo.

The recommendation mentioned that she was instrumental in the escape of thirty Allied airmen shot down in France and that she had not returned to England despite instructions to do so and had pleaded to be allowed to remain. She maintained communication with London till October when she was arrested and deported to Germany. At the time of this recommendation, the SOE files still had Noor as ‘missing’.

Meanwhile on 20 December 1945 the offices of the SOE were closed down. Vera Atkins wrote to Amina Begum on 22 December giving her the details of what Noor had been doing in the war.

She told Amina Begum that Noor had gone to France in June 1943 as a wireless operator for a British officer who was working with the Resistance movement in the Paris area. She said Noor had been very keen on her work and had sent her a personal note from the field. ‘The one thing that worried her at the time of her departure was the fact that you might long remain without news of her and she particularly asked that we should continue to write to you even if we did lose touch with her,’ Vera Atkins told Amina Begum.

‘Unfortunately after months of magnificent work she was captured. It was only in the late spring of 1944 that we became aware of this, but in view of her special request and the imminent invasion we continued our letters to you. We hoped that we might find her in France after the liberation.’

Vera Atkins told Amina Begum that after her imprisonment, Noor had managed to make a gallant attempt at escape which was unsuccessful. She had even excited the admiration of her German captors and she was not ill-treated.

In December 1945 Atkins was under the impression that Noor had been sent to Karlsruhe prison in May 1944 in the company of other British women and they had remained there till 25 July 1944, after which they were transferred to another prison. At this time she still did not have details about what had happened to Noor. But the War Office had practically abandoned all hope of finding her alive.

It was in April 1946, nearly a year after the war ended, that Vera Atkins learned about the fate of four British agents who had been executed at Natzweiler concentration camp in June 1944. She believed that Noor was one of the four young women who had been killed by lethal injection at the camp. The others were Andrée Borrel, Vera Leigh and Diana Rowden. The mystery fourth girl had been identified as having dark hair and being petite and Russian-born (as Noor was), and the SOE thought it was Noor. Actually it was Sonia Olschanezky, a Russian Jew and a professional dancer, who had been a courier to Jacques Weil and worked with Juggler, a Prosper sub-circuit.

Vera Atkins reported back to the War Ministry that all four girls had been kept in prisons in Paris until May 1944. On 12 May, eight women agents left Fresnes prison near Paris and travelled to Karlsruhe where they were placed in the civilian jail for women. They were Andrée Borrel, Vera Leigh, Diana Rowden, Odette Sansom, Madeleine Damerment, Yolande Beekman, Eliane Plewman and Sonia Olschanezky. However, the eighth girl was thought to be Noor.

It was Odette Sansom, the only SOE agent of those eight who had survived and returned from Ravensbruck concentration camp after the war, who told Atkins that the eighth girl was Noor. Odette seemed to remember the eighth girl on the train resembled Noor when she was shown her photographs. They had never met previously so she did not know her personally. Vera Atkins now listed the eight girls who left Fresnes prison as Odette Sansom, Diana Rowden, Noor Inayat Khan, Vera Leigh, Andrée Borrel, Eliane Plewman, Madeleine Damerment and Yolande Unternaehrer. The last three were at this stage still untraced as they had left Karlsruhe on the night of 11/12 September 1944.

In Karlsruhe the girls were placed in separate cells which they shared with German women who were political prisoners or criminals. They were not ill-treated and managed to communicate with each other though they were not allowed to meet. The women wardens had identified the prisoners by looking at their photographs.

Another German political prisoner in Karlsruhe told Vera Atkins that he remembered seven women passing him in the corridor in July 1944, between 4 and 5 a.m. They included the British agents he had seen before. The Gestapo officers now took them to a strange-looking grey car and took them away.

Four of the girls, thought Vera Atkins, were taken to Natzweiler, a camp in France about 100 miles from Karlsruhe. On 6 July the girls were seen by many of the inmates as they walked in. They were identified by Brian Stonehouse, an SOE agent, R.M. Sheppard and Albert Guérisse, the Belgian doctor who ran an escape line. Stonehouse described the fourth girl as having black hair, aged between twenty and twenty-five and being short. This girl was thought to be Noor.

Photographs of Andrée Borrel, Vera Leigh and Noor Inayat Khan were identified by fellow inmates and the story pieced together with eyewitness accounts.

The girls were brought in to the camp between 1 and 3 a.m. and taken to separate cells. Andrée Borrel managed to communicate with Dr Georges Boogaerts, who was in the next cell. He threw her some cigarettes and she threw him her money bag. Vera Leigh got into conversation with a prisoner working in the Zellenbau (cells close to the crematorium) and asked him for a pillow. Guérisse exchanged a few words with Diana Rowden or Noor Inayat Khan.

That night a curfew was imposed in the prison at 8 p.m. and the blackouts drawn. One prisoner saw that between 9 and 10 p.m. two SS men went to the Zellenbau and came away with one of the women who was led to the crematorium. One by one the same men came and took away the others. The next day the prisoners went to the crematorium and saw the charred bodies of the women and one unburnt woman’s shoe.

The prisoner in charge of the crematorium, a German criminal, stated that he was instructed to light the furnaces and have them up to maximum heat by 9.30 p.m. At the same time the SS officer in charge came into the crematorium with the SS doctor and the former camp doctor. The prisoners working in the crematorium were locked up in their cells and the prisoner on the top bunk could see from the fan window into the room next door. He saw the women prisoners being taken one by one to the doctor’s room, which adjoined the men’s dormitory. A few minutes later they were dragged out unconscious and taken towards the furnaces. The fourth resisted in the corridor and started to scream. She was overpowered and a few minutes later she too was dragged out unconscious. The prisoners heard the doors of the crematorium open and assumed that the women were immediately cremated.
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The War Office now sent a formal letter to the already shattered Inayat Khan family giving the circumstances of what they thought was the death of Noor Inayat Khan. Vilayat received the news and rushed in a frenzy to Jean Overton Fuller’s house. Ashen-faced he told her, ‘I’ve found out what happened to my sister. She was burned alive …’
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Since his mother was in poor health and already shattered by the news that Noor was missing, presumed dead, Vilayat and Claire did not tell her about the latest letter they had received about Noor’s death. He also sought power of attorney so that he could handle Noor’s affairs since his mother was heartbroken and the doctor had warned him that any shock could be fatal for her. He wrote these details to the War Office asking them to communicate with him and not with his mother who ‘becomes hysterical at the mention of my sister’s name. She has been so deeply grieved.’

On 24 May 1946, the War Office informed Amina Begum that the officials of Natzweiler concentration camp were to be tried as war criminals. The trial began at Wuppertal on 29 May 1946. Though her name was there as one of the victims, Noor had not been one of the unfortunate girls to have died at Natzweiler.

But soon Vilayat was to hear more. He received a letter from Yolande Lagrave, a Frenchwoman, who said she had been with his sister at Pforzheim prison in Germany. Vilayat wrote again to the War Office on 12 February 1947 saying that the notification of Noor’s death on the 6 July 1944 at Natzweiler did not tally with the information given by the Frenchwoman, explaining that Lagrave had seen Noor in Pforzheim. They had exchanged addresses on bowls without giving names and so she had traced the family. The girl had told him that his sister had left Pforzheim in September 1944 for an unknown destination.

Another informant was a German woman by the name of Elsa Findling, who communicated the message through D. McFarlin of the United Nations Refugee Association, who was based at Pforzheim.

From this source Vilayat had learnt that at the time when Strasbourg was taken by the Allies, all internees were taken to be executed. ‘My sister is buried in the local cemetery. The jail keeper who is said to have beaten my sister, has remained in his post to this day,’ wrote Vilayat in obvious despair.
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His letters to the War Office, all held in Noor’s personal file, reveal the deep anguish Vilayat was suffering. On one hand, he had to come to terms with his sister’s death, details of which seemed to be continually changing; on the other, he had to remain strong to support his mother, who had taken it very badly.

Vera Atkins now concentrated on discovering when Noor went to Pforzheim and where she was taken from there. Captain A. Nicholson of the War Crimes Group of North West Europe was given the task of obtaining photocopies of the Pforzheim prison register. He reported to Major N.G. Mott at the War Office. From the sworn statement of the prison director, they learnt that Noor was removed from Pforzheim to Dachau in September. Major Mott then reported to Vera Atkins that Noor, along with three other specially employed women, were removed to Dachau, where they were executed the following morning, 13 September. The long and tortuous path to investigate the death of Noor had come to an end.

The news was broken to a devastated Vilayat, who was told that there was little room for doubt that his sister had met her end in Dachau. It had taken two years after the end of the war to discover her fate.

On 16 November 1949, Vilayat had to go through the painful experience of meeting face to face the person who had allegedly betrayed his sister to the Germans. Renée Garry was tried before a French military court at the Reuilly Barracks on charges of betrayal. He had to appear as a witness for the prosecution. Other witnesses were Vogt (who at that time was a prisoner of the French), Madame Garry and Madame Aigrain.