Editing Violette Szabo (section)

==Ravensbrück==
With the Allies driving deep into France and [[George Patton]]'s Third US Army heading towards Paris, the decision was taken by the Germans to send their most valuable French prisoners to Germany. On 8 August 1944, Szabo, shackled to SOE wireless operator [[Denise Bloch]], was entrained with other male and female prisoners, including several SOE agents she knew, for transfer. At some point in the journey, probably outside [[Chalons-sur-Marne]], an Allied air raid caused the guards to temporarily abandon the train, allowing Szabo and Bloch to get water from a lavatory to the caged male prisoners in the next carriage, the two women both providing inspiration and a morale boost to the suffering men. When the train reached [[Reims]], the prisoners were taken by lorries to a large barn for two nights, where Szabo, still tied at the ankle to Bloch, who was in good spirits, was able to wash some of her clothes in a rudimentary fashion and to speak about her experiences to her SOE colleague Harry Peulevé.{{citation needed|date=June 2021}}

From Reims, via [[Strasbourg]], the prisoners went by train to [[Saarbrücken]] and a transit camp in the suburb of [[Neue Bremm]], where hygiene facilities were nonexistent, and food was only indigestible bread crusts. After about ten days,{{sfn|Ottaway|2003|p=129}} Szabo and most of the other women were sent on to Ravensbrück concentration camp for women where 50,000 (out of a total population of 130,000) were to die during the war. They reached Ravensbrück in late August 1944.<ref name="britannica">{{Cite web |date=2025-02-20 |title=Ravensbrück {{!}} Map, Concentration Camp, Women, & Facts {{!}} Britannica |url=https://www.britannica.com/place/Ravensbruck-concentration-camp-Germany |access-date=2025-04-20 |website=www.britannica.com |language=en}}</ref><ref name="Escott">{{cite book |last1=Escott |first1=Beryl E. |title=The Heroines of SOE |date=2010 |publisher=The History Press |location=Stroud, Gloucestershire |isbn=9780752487298 |page=174}}</ref> 

Although she endured hard labour and malnutrition, she helped save the life of Belgian resistance courier [[Hortense Clews|Hortense Daman]], kept up the spirits of her fellow detainees, and, according to fellow inmate American [[Virginia d'Albert-Lake]], constantly planned to escape.{{sfn|Minney|1983|pp=149–158}}<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Violette%3A+A+secret+story+of+wartime+bravery%3B+BRITISH+AGENT+TORTURED...-a087393718/ |publisher=thefreelibrary.com |title=Violette: A secret story of wartime bravery |access-date=9 September 2010}}</ref> While at Ravensbrück, Szabo, Denise Bloch, [[Lilian Rolfe]] and Lake were among 1,000 French women sent to the [[Heinkel]] factory at the sub-camp of [[Torgau]]. Here they protested and refused to make munitions, and were forced to work in the vegetable cellar outside the camp walls and then to dig potatoes. The British women also made contact with French prisoners at a nearby POW camp who, being better fed, provided them with extra rations and offered to send messages to London with a transmitter they had built (there is no evidence they were successful).{{sfn|Helm|2015|p=427}}

After the Torgau incident, Szabo, Bloch, Rolfe and Lake were part of a group of around 250 prisoners sent back to Ravensbrück on 6 October, where Szabo was put to work in the fabric store.{{sfn|Helm|2015|p=431}} In late October 1944, the protest women were transferred to a punishment camp at [[Chojna|Königsberg]], where they were forced into harsh physical labour felling trees, clearing rock-hard icy ground for the construction of an airfield and digging a trench for a narrow-gauge railway. Szabo volunteered for tree-felling in the forest, where the trees gave some shelter from the bitter winds (Lilian and Denise were too ill to join her). In the bitter East Prussian winter of 1944, each day the women were forced to stand for ''Appell'' (roll-call) in the early morning for up to five hours before being sent to work, many of them freezing to death. Szabo was dressed only in the summer clothes she had been wearing when sent to Germany and the women received barely any food and slept in frozen barracks without blankets.{{sfn|Helm|2015|pp=523–524}}{{sfn|Ottaway|2003|pp=143–146}} According to Christine Le Scornet, a seventeen-year-old French girl whom Szabo befriended, and [[Jeannie Rousseau]], the co-leader of the Torgau revolt, she maintained her morale, was optimistic about liberation and continued to plan to escape.{{sfn|Helm|2015|pp=522–524}} On 19 or 20 January 1945, the three British agents were recalled to Ravensbrück and sent first to the ''Strafblock'', where they were possibly brutally assaulted and then to the punishment bunker, where they were kept in solitary confinement.{{sfn|Helm|2015|pp=527–528}} The women were already in poor physical condition—Rolfe could barely walk—and the abuse finally weakened Szabo's morale.{{sfn|Binney|2002|pp=241–244}}{{efn|There is some evidence that Szabo was raped while in German custody but this would have been contrary to usual SS, SD, and [[Gestapo]] practice (for all their individual and collective crimes, the men of these organisations regarded themselves as professionals with, however perverted, a sense of honour.){{sfn|Binney|2002|p=431}}}}

===Execution===
Szabo was killed in the execution alley at Ravensbrück, aged 23, on or before 5 February 1945. She was shot in the back of the head while kneeling down, by SS-Rottenführer Schult in the presence of camp commandant [[Fritz Suhren]] (who pronounced the death penalty), camp overseer and deputy commandant [[Johann Schwarzhuber]], SS-Scharführer Zappe, SS-Rottenführer Walter Schenk (responsible for the crematorium), chief camp doctor Dr. Richard Trommer and dentist Dr. [[Martin Hellinger]], from the deposition of Schwarzhuber recorded by Vera Atkins 13 March 1946.{{sfn|Ottaway|2003|pp=152–154}} Denise Bloch and Lilian Rolfe – neither of whom could walk and were carried on stretchers – were shot at the same time, by order of the highest Nazi authorities; the bodies were disposed of in the camp [[crematorium]]. Their clothes were not returned to the camp ''Effektenkammer'' (property store) as usually happened after executions.{{efn|Mary Lindell, an escape line organiser also imprisoned in Ravensbrück, believed the three women agents were hanged, as was the usual practice in the camp and their clothes distributed to other prisoners.{{sfn|Wynne|1961|p=253}} Vera Atkins's detailed investigations, including interrogations of Suhren, Schwatzhuber and others who were involved in the killings, established the official version of execution by shooting in the back of the neck.{{sfn|Binney|2002|pp=243–244}}{{sfn|Helm|2005|pp=314–315}} In 2015, Helm cast doubt on Schwarzhuber's account, suggesting he was trying to give a veneer of dignity to the killings in his interrogations and pointing out that several French agents transported to Ravensbrück along with the three SOE agents, had been executed by hanging shortly before.{{sfn|Helm|2015|pp=525–528}}}}

===Comparisons===
Along with Szabo, Bloch, and Rolfe, one other member of the SOE was also executed at Ravensbrück: [[Cecily Lefort]]. She was killed in the gas chamber sometime in February 1945. 

Forty-one female Section F SOE agents served in France, some for more than two years, most for only a few months.  Twenty-six of them survived World War II. Twelve were executed including Szabo, one was killed when her ship was sunk, two died of disease while imprisoned, and one died of natural causes.  Female agents ranged in age from 20 to 53 years.<ref>Foot, M.R.D. (1966), ''SOE in France, London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office'', pp. 465–469.</ref>