Denise Bloch - Biography

Denise Madeleine Bloch (1916–1945, Ravensbrück, Germany) was a French secret agent working with the British Special Operations Executive in World War II.

1 Early life
2 Special Operations Executive
3 Posthumous awards
4 Sources and external links

Early life

Born to a Jewish family (Jacques Henri Bloch and Suzanne Levi-Strauss) in Barrault, Paris, France in 1916; Bloch had three brothers. Before the war, she was a secretary at Citroen. As the family were Jewish, they were rounded up by the Gestapo in 1942 in occupied France.

Special Operations Executive

Her job at Citroen was as secretary to Lieutenant Jean Maxime Aron (code name 'Joseph') who was also a Jewish Resistance leader in France.

Bloch was recruited in Lyon to work for the Special Operations Executive (SOE). She began resistance work with SOE radio operator Brian Stonehouse until his arrest near the end of October that year.

Following Stonehouse's capture, she went into hiding until early 1943 when she was put in touch with SOE agents George Reginald Starr and Philippe de Vomécourt. She began working with them in the town of Agen in the Lot-et-Garonne département in the south of France. However, it was decided to send her to London and accompanied by another agent, she walked across the Pyrenees mountains making their way to Gibraltar and eventually London. There, SOE trained her as a wireless operator in preparation for a return to France.

On 2 March 1944, with fellow SOE agent, Robert Benoist, she was dropped back into central France. Working in the Nantes area, they re-established contact with SOE agent and Benoist's fellow race car driver, Jean-Pierre Wimille. However, in June, both she and Benoist were arrested and Bloch was interrogated and tortured before being shipped to Germany. She was held in prisons at Torgau in Saxony and at Königsberg in Brandenburg, where she suffered great hardship from exposure, cold, and malnutrition.

Eventually shipped to Ravensbrück concentration camp, sometime between 25 January 1945 and 5 February 1945, 29-year-old Denise Madeleine Bloch was executed by the Germans and her body disposed of in the crematorium. Both Lilian Rolfe and Violette Szabo, two other female members of the SOE held at Ravensbrück, were executed at or about the same time. In May, just days before the German surrender, SOE agent Cecily Lefort was also executed at Ravensbrück. It is alleged that SS-Sturmbannführer Horst Kopkow was involved in the arrest/killing of these SOE agents.

Denise Bloch's family gravesite at the Montmartre Cemetery in Paris memorializes her life and execution.

Posthumous awards

In England, Bloch is recorded on the Brookwood Memorial in Surrey. She was posthumously awarded the "King's Commendation for Brave Conduct" by Great Britain.

In France, posthumous honors include the Legion of Honor; the Médaille combattant de la Résistance, and the Croix de Guerre avec Palme.

As one of the SOE agents who died for the liberation of France, she is listed on the "Roll of Honor" on the Valençay SOE Memorial in the town of Valençay, in the Indre département of France.