Damerment, Madeleine Zoe

Date of birth:: November 11th, 1917 (Lille, France)
Date of death:: September 13th, 1944 (Dachau, Germany)
Service number:: Field Agent
Nationality:: French

Biography

Madeleine Damerment was born in Lille, the daughter of the Headpostmaster of Lille; following the occupation of France by the Germans in World War II, her family became actively involved with the French Resistance. The unassuming twenty-two-year-old Madeleine worked as an assistant to Michael Trotobas on the escape line set up by Albert Guérisse. She helped downed British airmen and others to escape France until 1942, when it is believed that one of her fellow resistance workers, Harold Cole, betrayed the group and she had to flee to England.

Once in England, Damerment volunteered to work with the Special Operations Executive (SOE). Trained to be a courier for the "Bricklayer" network, on the night of 28 February 1944, she and agents France Antelme and Lionel Lee were parachuted into a field near the city of Chartres in France. However, they had been betrayed and the waiting Gestapo arrested them on landing. Shipped to Gestapo headquarters on the Avenue Foch in Paris, Damerment was subjected to examination and torture. On 12 May 1944 she was sent with several other captured SOE agents to the civilian prison for women at Karlsruhe in Germany. She was held there under horrific conditions until 11 September when she was abruptly transferred to Dachau concentration camp with fellow agents Eliane Plewman, Yolande Beekman and Noor Inayat Khan.[2]

At dawn on 13 September 1944, the day after their arrival in Dachau, the four young women were taken to a small courtyard next to the crematorium and forced to kneel on the ground. They were then executed by a shot through the back of the head and their bodies cremated.[1]

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