Vera Atkins - Biography

Vera Atkins, CBE (b. 16 June 1908, Bucharest, Romania - d. 24 June 2000, Hastings, England) was a British Intelligence Officer during World War II.

Early life

She was born Vera Maria Rosenberg to a Romanian Jewish father, and a British Jewish mother, in Bucharest, Romania. Her family emigrated to England in 1933 but, after a couple of years, they moved to France. She enrolled at the Sorbonne in Paris to study modern languages before attending finishing school at Lausanne. The surname 'Atkins' was her South African-born mother's maiden name, which she adopted as her own. She was a cousin of Rudolf Vrba.

World War II

In May 1940, Atkins returned to England, and in February 1941, she joined the French section of the Special Operations Executive (SOE). She remained a civilian until August 1944, when she was commissioned a flight officer in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF). She was officially the section's intelligence officer while serving as assistant to section head Maurice Buckmaster.

Atkins was given one of SOE's most sensitive jobs - recruiting and deploying female agents. Recently controversy has arisen as to why clues that one of F section's main spy networks had been penetrated by the Germans - F section being the section of the SOE in charge of operations in France - were not picked up, and Buckmaster and Atkins failed to pull out agents at risk. "Instead they sent in several more. A radio operator, Gilbert Norman, had sent a message omitting his security check - a deliberate mistake. So why did she not challenge Buckmaster when other signals from captured radios came in without checks?" Atkins let Buckmaster, " repeat his errors at the expense of agents lives." Her biographer Sarah Helm believes that Atkins, who still had relatives in Nazi occupied Europe, may have had secret dealings with the Nazis.

After World War II

When the allied victory in Europe was accomplished, she went to Germany. Her self-appointed mission was to investigate the fate of the 118 F section agents who had disappeared in enemy territory. She succeeded in every case except one.

Death

In 1987, Atkins was appointed Commandeur of the Légion d'Honneur. She retired to Winchelsea, Sussex, and died in a nursing home in Hastings on 24 June 2000, aged 92.

Her gravestone is in Zennor churchyard in Cornwall, with the name Vera May Atkins, Légion d'honneur Croix de Guerre.

"Into The Dark"

Recorded interviews with Vera Atkins are used in Into the Dark, a short film directed by Genevieve Simms.

Bibliography