30. Betrayed Into the Nazis’ Clutches
Assistant Section Officer Noor Inayat Khan survived for longer than the average six weeks life expectancy of clandestine wireless operators in Nazi-occupied France. She arrived in mid-June, 1943, and lasted for nearly four months, before she was arrested by the SD on October 13th, 1943. She was betrayed to the Germans either by Henri Dericourt, or a female agent named Renee Garry, driven by jealousy because her love interest was attracted to Noor.
Captured documents the Germans to mount a counter-intelligence operation that nabbed three more SOE agents. Noor escaped her imprisonment twice, but was recaptured. After the second attempt, she was classified as a “dangerous prisoner”, and was kept in solitary confinement, with her hands and feet in shackles. Despite harsh conditions and harsher interrogations, Noor refused to give the Nazis anything. After ten months of cruel confinement, she was sent to Dachau Concentration Camp, where she was brutally beaten by an SS officer, before she was shot to death on September 13th, 1944. Her last words according to an inmate who witnessed her death were “Liberte“. After the war, she was posthumously awarded the British George Cross, and the French Croix de Guerre.