Lesbian Resistance Fighters & Lesbians Who Defied The Nazi Regime, WWII

Bertha spoke openly on taboo subjects such as Jewish unwed mothers, illegitimate children and encouraged Jewish women to demand social, economic and political rights. She also attended major international conferences on the issue of prostitution and travelled to Eastern Europe to organise Jewish anti-white slavery committees.

When Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany in March 1933 and instituted the first set of racial laws restricting Jewish civil rights, though Bertha was filled with fear she was extraordinarily brave. Bertha aided innumerable friends and acquaintances to emigrate to Palestine. Moreover, at the age of 76,in 1934, she took a group of Jewish children out of Nazi Germany, delivering them to safety, to a Jewish orphanage in Glasgow, Scotland.

There is speculation that Bertha was a lesbian because she never married and at least one of her close friends was a gay, sooooo I have included her here ;). Her close friendship with Hannah Karminski, 38 years her junior, who had taken over the leadership of the Jüdischer Mädchenclub ('Jewish Girl's Club') in 1924 seems more as a spiritual mother, friend, and mentor. Hannah Karminski (1897 – 1942) later had a life-partner Paula Fürst (1894 – 1942) - guttingly, both became victims of the Holocaust.

Bertha died, of cancer, on May 28, 1936 and was buried in the old Rat Beil-Strasse Jewish Cemetery, Frankfurt. A feminist to her last breadth, in her last will, she hoped that people came to her grave would leave a small stone, "as a quiet promise...to serve the mission of women's duties and women's joy... unflinchingly and courageously." Bio.

FYI Bertha Pappenheim was Sigmund Freud's "Anna 0" and it was she who came up with the term "talking cure" which led to the science of Psychotherapy.

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... Claude Cahun was a groundbreaking French surrealist photographer and artist who dared to disregard gender roles. She is quoted: "Shuffle the cards. Masculine? Feminine? It depends on the situation. Neuter is the only gender that always suits me." Claude was born Lucy Renee Mathilde Schwob but in 1919, she officially changed her name to Claude Cahun for its seemingly gender neutrality. She found fame when she joined the group of European surrealists in the early 1930s and in 1936, she was featured in The Exposition surréaliste d'Objets, which was held in the Parisian gallery of Charles Ratton and in The London International Surrealist Exhibition held at the New Burlington Galleries in London's Mayfair.

Claude's life partner was Suzanne Malherbe, who often went by the name Marcel Moore. Stranger than fiction, Moore was Cahun's stepsister! They met in 1909 when Claude was fifteen years old and Marcel was seventeen. After Marcel's widowed mother dated Claude's divorced father, the two married in 1917. In 1922, Claude and Marcel (now a illustrator, designer, and photographer) began holding salon meetings inside their home and became known as a power couple in the artist world. In their salon they hosted iconic artists such as Adrienne Monnier, André Breton, Henri Michaux and Sylvia Beach. Claude and Marcel collaborated frequently and it is believed that Marcel was often the person standing behind the camera during Claude's portrait shoots and was an equal partner in their collages.

As Claude was Jewish, at the rise of anti-Semitism in 1937 they both fled Europe and settled on the island of Jersey. German troops invaded Jersey in 1940, so the two reverted to their original names and masqueraded themselves as being sisters. For several years, the two heroically risked their lives by producing and distributing anti-Nazi fliers to the German soldiers. Many of the anti-Nazi fliers contained translated snippets of BBC reports on the Nazis' crimes and insolence, which were pasted together to create rhythmic poems and harsh criticism. The couple would get dressed up and attend German military events, secretly placing their pamphlets in soldier's pockets, on their chairs, and in cigarette boxes for soldiers to find. They also inconspicuously crumpled up and threw their fliers into cars and windows, for German personal to find. Their luck ran out in 1944 and both were imprisoned and sentenced to death. They were saved by the Liberation of Jersey in 1945 and after the war remained in Jersey.

Claude's health never recovered from her treatment during her wartime imprisonment, and she died in 1954 while Marcel, committed suicide in 1972. Both are buried side by side at St Brelade's Church, Jersey.

Claude Cahun's War Decorations: Claude Cahun was awarded the Medal of French Gratitude for being part of the resistance, in 1951.

Marcel Moore's War Decorations: ?

Commemorations: In 2018, a Parisian street close to the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs where Marcel and Claude lived, was renamed "Allée Claude Cahun - Marcel Moore".

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WWI - Wanda Gertz von Schliess was of noble birth and grew up with a passion for the military. When World War I broke out in 1914, 18-year-old Wanda joined the 4th Warsaw Battalion but in 1915 the Battalion was incorporated into the Polish Legion, and she like other women were prohibited from the front line. Undeterred Wanda cut off her hair, dressed in men's clothes and marched up to the recruitment office of the Polish Legion calling herself "Kazimierz Zuchowicz". Though she failed the medical the doctor who examined her helped her become a medical orderly. Under her "Kazik" pseudonym, in 1917, she joined the secret women's branch of Polish Military Organisation, which she was arrested for later that year and released after paying bail.

World War II - under a new pseudonym "Lena", she became one of the first women to join the Polish resistance movement. She made history as the first woman to create and command a fully female military unit – The "Dysk" unit (a Women's Diversion and Sabotage Unit), as a part of the Polish Home Army. The DYSK carried out assassinations of female Gestapo informants and sabotage. On August 2, 1944, "Dysk" attacked the Waffen SS supply depots at Stawki,Warsaw. Not only did The "Dysk" kill all the German guards, they freed a number of Jewish forced laborers. These SS warehouses contained enormous quantities of food - the captured food would help keep the people living in Warsaw's Old Town alive in the weeks to come. In 1944, she was promoted to the rank of Major.

Together with her unit she fought in the Warsaw Uprising (1944). The Warsaw Uprising was an operation,from 1 Aug – 2 Oct 1944, by the Polish underground resistance to liberate Warsaw from German occupation. Without the support of Allies, the Warsaw Uprising tragically failed. It is estimated that Polish losses during the uprising included 150,000 civilian deaths and about 20,000 Polish Home Army casualties. The German forces lost an estimated 10,000 troops. After the collapse of the uprising, she was arrested and then held in German prisoner-of-war camps: Ożarów (Poland), Lamsdorf (Silesia), Mühlberg (Saxony) and Molsdorf (Thuringia). She was liberated by American troops in 13 May 1945. The following year she travelled around Europe searching for displaced Polish women.

Wanda moved to the UK where she worked as an Inspector of Women Soldiers in northern England preparing Polish female soldiers for civilian life in the UK.

In 1960, Major Wanda Gertz ashes were taken back to Poland and interred at the Powązki Military Cemetery in Warsaw.

War Decorations:

• Silver Cross of the Virtuti Militari
• Knight's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta (Krzyż Kawalerski Orderu Odrodzenia Polski) - awarded posthumously
• Cross of Valour (Krzyż Walecznych) - five times, the first time in 1921
• Cross of Independence (Krzyż Niepodległości), with Swords
• Gold Cross of Merit with Swords (Krzyż Zasługi z Mieczami)

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In 1932, Rose became a volunteer assistant curator at the Jeu de Paume Museum, in Paris. By the time of the German occupation of France, in 1941, she was in paid employment as the overseer of the Jeu de Paume Museum. This coincided with Hitler's systematic looting of artworks from museums and private art collections throughout the occupied regions. Hitler's goal was to create the Führermuseum in Linz, Austria filled with plundered art which would be the most prestigious art museum in history.

Nazi Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring helped establish the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), directed by Alfred Rosenberg, the official Nazi office charged with confiscating prominent, mainly Jewish, art collections in the western Nazi-occupied territories. From 1940 to 1944 the ERR used the Jeu de Paume Museum as a central storage and sorting depot pending distribution to various persons and places in Germany.

Documenting looted art - cunningly, Rose hid from the ERR, the fact she could understand German - she had visited Germany several time for holidays! Therefore she was able to eavesdrop on German conversations. She witnessed the frequent "shopping trips" of Goering, who made more than twenty separate visits to the Jeu de Paume to select works of art for Hitler’s planned Führermuseum and to add to his burgeoning personal collection.

While the Nazi plundering was being carried out, Rose courageously began secretly and meticulously documenting as much as possible of the more than 20,000 pieces of art brought to the Jeu de Paume Museum. Rose eavesdropped on truck drivers, guards, and packers conversations, and was able to learn about which artwork was being ransacked. For four years Rose kept track of where and to whom the artworks were being shipped to. She further risked her life to provide information regarding railroad shipments of art to the French Resistance so that they would not mistakenly blow up the trains loaded carrying the priceless treasures.

Train 40044 - a few weeks before the Liberation of Paris on 25 August 1944, Rose learned the ERR was planning to remove as much artwork as they could to Germany. Moreover, she learned artworks were heading to the Aubervilliers train station on the outskirts of Paris. By the 2 August 1944, 148 crates of paintings containing in total 967 paintings, including works by Braque, Cézanne, Degas, Dufy, Gauguin, Modigliani, Picasso, Toulouse-Lautrec and Utrillo had been loaded on to five wagons waiting to be hooked up to another 48 wagons containing confiscated furniture and personal possessions of deported citizens.

Rose was able to give a copy of the Nazi shipment order which listed the train and goods wagon numbers, the contents of each crate and the destination of each wagon (either to Kogl Castle at Sankt Georgen im Attergau in Austria and the Nikolsburg depository in Moravia.) This information was passed on to the French Resistance.

The train was designated 40044 and was to haul 53 goods wagons. Luckily, it's departure was held up due a number of reasons: slow loading, a French railway workers strike and higher priority trains carrying fleeing Germans. After departure, the train suffered a mechanical breakdown at Le Bourget which caused a further 48 hour delay. This gave the the French Resistance the opportunity to derail two trains which blocked the tracks up ahead leaving the train stranded at Aulnay-sous-Bois. The train was secured by a small detachment Second Armored Division of the French Army and the artworks were saved due to Rose Valland's crucial information.

Following the liberation of Paris by the Allied Forces, Rose was initially arrested as a suspected Nazi collaborator, because she had been employed at the Jeu de Paume and Nazis notables like Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring had come to personally select some of the stolen paintings for his own private collection. After witnesses came forward to vouch for her she was soon released.

The information that Rose had clandestinely gathered led to the discovery of multiple repositories of looted art in Southern Germany, most prominently at Neuschwanstein Castle in the Bavarian Alps, where more than twenty thousand works of art and cultural objects were found. Rose oversaw the return of 1,400 crates of artwork from Neuschwanstein Castle direct to the Jeu de Paume.

Rose's records helped in the return of looted artworks to their rightful owners. On 4 May 1945, she served as a captain in the French First Army to locate stolen works of art and return them to France. At the Nuremberg trials in February 1946 Rose appeared as a witness and confronted Hermann Goering about the artworks he had stolen. For eight years, in Germany she was a member Commission de Récupération Artistique (Commission for the Recovery of Works of Art). Learn more about Rose.

In a 2013 report to the French Senate, it is estimated that due to the efforts of Rose Valland, it had been possible for the Commission de Récupération Artistique and the Allies to locate approximately 60,000 works (including paintings, sculptures, tapestries and precious coin), with three-quarters of them returned to France before 1950.

Rose Valland died on September 18, 1980 and is buried in her hometown of Saint-Étienne-de-Saint-Geoirs.

War Awards

• Legion of Honour - by the French government
• Commandeur of the Order of Arts and Letters - by the French government
• Médaille de la Résistance- by the French government
• Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit - by the Federal Republic of Germany
• Medal of Freedom - by U.S.A government

Commemorations:

• Commemorative plaques: one in front of the Musée du Jeu de Paume, in the Jardin des Tuileries, and the second on the building in the 5th arrondissement, where she lived with her life long partner Joyce Heer (who had been a interpreter at the Embassy of the United States).
• Streets: a Parisian street is named after her in the 17th arrondissement. Other streets are named after her in several French cities, including in Grenoble.

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Because she was a lassie, Evelyn's career in journalism started on... the beauty page at the Daily Mail even though Evelyn didn't wear makeup! Evelyn was even a risk taker in love. In 1931, Evelyn went to interview (married, Bloomsbury novelist) Vita Sackville-West at Sissinghurst where she was designing and shaping the famous gardens and they had wee fling even though Evelyn was involved with English gardener Olive Rinder. And in that same year, at a party Evelyn met twice divorced English journalist Joy McSweeney who became her life partner.

Evelyn moved to the Evening Standard, in 1935, and ran the "women's interest" pages. When World War II broke out, in 1939, Evelyn could no longer hack working on women's interest, so she quit her position and went straight to the news editor, demanding, "from now on I'm working for you." At first she spent some time behind the writing desk, but still found herself dissatisfied. She volunteered for the Air Raid Patrol to look out for air-raids, and worked as a driver with the National Fire Service.

When she could no longer hold in her frustration, she went to report on the front lines. During World War II, out over over 1,600 war correspondents there were only around 100 female war correspondents. General Montgomery objected to women reporters on the battlefield so she was assigned to report from the hospitals in France. Undeterred Evelyn approached General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny who headed the Free French Forces. With the French General's support, she made her way onto the battlefield.

It was there that she truly began to thrive as a journalist, but there is so little information online about here time as a war correspondent. Evelyn told historian Phillip Knightley, how she assisted in capturing a town in Bavaria:

During her illustrious career she made many firsts. Evelyn was one of the first journalists to reach liberated Paris. On the liberation of Paris in 1944, she and General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny marched down the Champs Elysées together.

It's also said that she was the first woman journalist to reach Hitler's Kehlsteinhaus (Eagle's Nest) in Berchtesgaden after it was captured. After climbing up the Kehlstein a rocky outcrop and through the snow, she helped herself to a bottle of Hitler's "excellent Rhine wine". Slàinte mhath!

After the war she returned to the Evening Standard's news desk and to Joy, but moved to The Sunday Times, in 1955, where she stayed until she retired in 1970, aged 70.

War Decorations

• Croix de Guerre with Silver Star - the first female war correspondent to recieve this decoration

Commemorations:

• Vita Sackville-West's 1931 love poems in "Collected Poems", are addressed to Evelyn Irons, though the "more erotic ones" were never published. They remained lifelong friends.

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Isabel was born into New York City’s upper crust - her father, S. Osgood Pell, was a real estate speculator and according to The New York Times "quite conspicuous in society". On his early death, however, she was left penniless.

Though she had numerous lovers including: celebrated interior decorator Elsie de Wolfe, the painter Margarett Sargent, and Hungarian sculptor Rene Praha it was after a fling with a Metropolitan Opera soprano which became public, she left for Paris. In Paris she hung out in Natalie Clifford Barney's Salon and soon found love with Claire, the Marquise de Forbin (born Claire Charles-Roux, 1908–1992). Smitten, Isabel moved into a mill in the town of Auribeau to be near Claire.

When France was occupied in 1940, both Isabel and Claire joined the French Resistance. According to a Associated Press story (1944), Claire used her home as a centre for distributing anti-Nazi propaganda. Her luck ran out in 1943, when Axis agents (Italian soldiers) discovered hidden weapons and a radio in her mill and they arrested her. Along with her maid, they were interned in a prison at Puget-Thénier. During the day she was allowed to take walks and some how was able to make contact with the Maquis (Free French) and organised an underground cell inside the prison. Her luck came back - she was only imprisoned for a few months as the prisoners were set free when the Italian guards abandoned the prison on Italy's surrender to the Allies on September 8, 1943.

With vigour, she sent word to the Maquis that she was a great shot and wanted to join them. Under the alias Fredericka, she undertook dangerous assignments for an underground Resistance leader named Joseph until he was discovered and murdered by the Gestapo. She became known as "la femme à la mèche blonde" (the woman with the blond streak).

In August 1944, as the Allies were retaking France, Isabel rescued a contingent of American soldiers surrounded by Germans in the small town of Tanaron. Tall, lean "la femme à la mèche blonde" came out from her hiding place, and strode down the main street, wearing the tricolor badge of the Free French toward the American soldiers and lead the Yanks through German lines to safety.

After the war, Pell moved back to New York City. Learn more.

War Honours

• Médaille de la Résistance - by the French government
• Citoyen d'Honneur - by the French government

Commemorations: The plaza in Puget-Théniers was renamed in Isabel Pell's honour.

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... Marlene Dietrich is an iconic German-American actress and singer. Her performance as Lola-Lola in Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel (1930) in which he sings "Falling in Love Again" and which became her signature song, brought her international acclaim and a contract with Paramount Pictures in America. She became one of the highest-paid actresses of the time featuring in classics like Shanghai Express (1932) and The Devil Is a Woman (1935). The American Film Institute named Dietrich the ninth greatest female screen legend of classic Hollywood cinema, in 1999. Dietrich was renowned for attending underground drag balls and queer revues in 1920s Weimer Berlin and once declared "I am, at heart, a gentleman". Refering to the closeted lesbian and bi-sexual scene in Hollywood, of which she was a prominent a member, she coined the phrase "sewing circle". She had an affair with Mercedes de Acosta (a poet, playwright, and novelist and another key member of the "sewing circle". Did she or didn't she have a love affair with fellow actress Greta Garbo and the singer Edith Piaf? That is the question!

In interviews Dietrich said that while in London filming Knight Without Armour (1937), she was approached by Nazi Party officials and offered lucrative contracts to return to Germany to be the foremost film star in the Third Reich. In the sanctuary of London, she refused their offers and in 1937, applied for U.S. citizenship, renouncing her German citizenship.

With Billy Wilder (a legendary Austrian Jewish Director who had escaped to France then America) and several other exiles, in the late 1930s, they created a fund to help Jews and French dissidents escape from Germany, house them, provide financial support and even advocate their American citizenship. It is In 1937, her entire salary for Knight Without Armor (reportedly $450,000) was put into escrow to help the refugees and she opened her home in America to German and French exiles during World War II.

On America's entry to WWII, Dietrich became one of the first public figures to help sell American war bonds and was reported to have sold more war bonds than any other star. Between 1944 and 1945, she performed in morale-boosting shows for Allied troops in Algeria, Italy, the UK, France, and Heerlen in the Netherlands, and entered Germany with Generals James M. Gavin and George S. Patton.

Dietrich also worked with the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (O.S.S.), the predecessor of today's CIA, to record a series of anti-Nazi albums, using propaganda to weaken the morale of Nazi troops. The broadcasts of these songs and interviews, sent over German airwaves, were meant to create tension between the Axis Powers (the military alliance of Germany, Italy and Japan who fought in World War II against the Allies).

After the war Dietrich deservedly received, in 1947:

• The Medal of Freedom - for her "extraordinary record entertaining troops overseas during the war" and was also awarded
• The Légion d'Honneur - by the French government for her wartime work.

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Though Bet's bar wasn't the first bar that allowed LGBT persons to openly associate, the fact that she was openly lesbian, and accepting of a very diverse clientele, led her pub to be one of the most known. In Café 't Mandje lesbians and gays could freely hang out as long as there was no kissing, which would have violated the vice laws and have cost her her liquor license. Her fun mixed clientele included LGBT barflys, artists, intellectuals, pimps and prostitutes, sailors ...

During the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands gay men became targets of the Nazis, but Bet's pub was off-limits to German troops because of its reputation as a red-light district establishment. Bet had a light installed in a plaster owl. When the bar was being raided or when homophobic patrols were sweeping the area, she would lit the plaster owl light to warn her customers to flee. She also bravely allowed the bar to be used as an arms depot for the Dutch resistance. She was also known for her kind charitable works, helping the poor, children and the elderly.

Commemorations: On Café 't Mandje's 90th anniversary, in 2017, a bridge spanning the Oudezijds Achterburgwal canal between the Korte Stormsteeg and Korte Niezel streets was renamed to honour Bet van Beeren. This was seen as symbolic to represent fun Bet's endeavours to build bridges in the community between diverse groups.

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Nadine was the daughter of a Chinese diplomat father and a noble Belgian mother. Just before WWII, in Paris, Nadine had worked for and was a lover of Natalie Clifford Barney. In 1940, Natalie and her girlfriend of the moment, moved to Italy to escape Nazi Germany. Nadine stayed in France, and joined the French resistance. No details have yet been revealed but it is assumed that she was arrested by the Gestapo because of her activities in the French resistance. In 1944, she was transported to Ravensbrück Women's Concentration Camp known as "Hell for Women". There she had to wear a red triangle, which marked her as a political prisoner. Nadine had to do forced labour at Siemens and became friends with Rachel Krausz and her nine-year-old daughter Irene Krausz, both British citizens, who had lived in the Netherlands.

The moving documentary Nelly & Nadine (2022) reveals how Nadine found love in the horrendous nightmare of a concentration camp with a well-respected Belgian opera singer, Nelly Mousset-Vos. They were separated in March 1945, when Nelly was deported to the Mauthausen concentration camp, where she almost died.

Nadine saved the lives of Rachel and Irene who were nearly "exterminated" by the Nazis. Shortly before the liberation of the camp, in April 1945, along with thousands of other prisoners, Nadine, Rachel and Irene, were evacuated to Sweden on Red Cross White Buses. Their arrival in Malmö on April 28 was documented by Swedish news photographers.

After the war's end Nadine and Nelly were finally reunited and lived together until Nadine's death in 1972. Sooooo watch Nelly & Nadine.

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In 1924, she joined the Communist Party, and served as a Communist Party city councillor in Berlin from 1929 till 1932, when she was taken off the list of candidates because of her refusal to hide that she was a lesbian.

In January 1933 the Nazi Party took power and converted Germany into a one-party dictatorship. Political activity - except in support of the Nazi Party - became illegal. On February 27, 1933, The Reichstag (the German parliament building) was burned down and Communists were instantly blamed for the fire. Subsequently in March 1933 those identified as Communists began to be arrested.

Hilde moved out of the home she was sharing with her partner, Maria, in order to protect Maria. On 6 April 1933, the authorities arrested Hilde in connection with her Communist Party and other "resistance" activities. When she refused to sign an inaccurate record of her interrogation, she was taken to the police station in Alexanderplatz where she was detained with 36 other women. After a month, she ended up in the Barnim Street women's prison, along with around 200 other "politicals". At the end of September 1933, she was released and placed under Gestapo surveillance. Her political history made it hard to find work, but she found a job with Siemens, where she was able to pursue her "illegal party work" inside the company.

In 1939, she met Else "Eddy" Klopsch who became her life partner. A year later they purchased together a piece of land in Prieros, a hamlet set in marshy countryside between Berlin and Cottbus and built a large allotment shed.

From 1941 to circa 1944, Hilde and Eddy ran a little restaurant, under Else's father’s name located in Berlin's Scheunen quarter, which had been previously a shop under Jewish ownership. By this time, the Nazis had confiscated all Jewish businesses and the contents within them. They were required by law to display a "Für Juden verboten!" ("Forbidden to Jews") sign in the shop window, but they always covered the sign with the daily menu. The premises clandestinely became a refuge for recently released or escaped from detention women from the underground Communist Party. They would nurse people back to health, hiding them and supporting their escape from Germany. In 1943, they hide Erna Hackbarth, the then partner of Richard Stahlmann (who later became the Deputy Head of The Foreign Intelligence Service of the GDR), in their Prieros allotment shed after she had managed to escape from a concentration camp.

After the failed attempt at assassinating Hitler on 20 July 1944 there was much focus to hunt down the assassins, associates and political opponents (which the Nazis had a list of). Overnight on 22/23 August 1944 there was a mass roundup of political opponents under Aktion Gitter - Hilda was on the list. They were able to escape in time to avoid capture due to a tip-off from a friend of Eddy’s who was in the German police.

Hilda and Eddy spent the rest of the war years hiding in their allotment shed in Prieros. By the time Berlin was liberated by the Red army in April/May 1945, they were starving. After the war, they joined the Department of "Victims of Fascism" for the district government of Schöneberg and worked on the reconstruction. In 1946, she was a co-instigator of a "child rescue" ("Rettet die Kinder") project.

That same year Hilda decided to resign from Communist Party - anticipating this, the local party leadership expelled her from the Party, January 1946, using her lesbian relationship to justify the expulsion and denounced her to her employers at the town hall. Not only was she bombarded with threatening letters, a month later she lost her job. What thanks for her passionately being a Party member and endangering her life to safe Communist Party members.

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Éveline Garnier was a Parisian librarian and was in love with French Jew Andrée Jacob whom she met through her uncle, the philosopher Jacques Maritain. After the occupation of France, Éveline and Andrée joined the French Resistance - Éveline was given the codename "Anne" and used her job as a librarian as cover for her clandestine work for the French Resistance.

Combat movement - Éveline worked in close collaboration with Claude Bourdet (who co-founded the underground resistance newspaper Combat) within the Combat movement, working across intelligence, recruitment, organisation, and direct action.

Réseau Comète (Comet Line) - even riskier, she worked with Father Foussard, within the Comet Line, which rescued and repatriated Allied airmen that were shot down on French soil.

Saving Jews - Éveline & Andrée also helped to save Jews by making false papers for them.

In September 1943, Éveline was assigned Deputy Secretary General of the "Noyautage des administrations publiques" (NAP) network. NAP aimed at infiltrating the French Vichy Government. The Vichy Government was founded when France ended it's war with Germany by signing the Franco-German Armistice and this divided France into three parts: northern France was controlled by the Germans and was therefore defined as the ‘occupied zone’; the north-eastern side was annexed to Belgium and became the ‘forbidden zone’; and southern France was the ‘unoccupied zone’. The South was under the control of Marshal Pétain’s right-wing government, which was known as the Vichy Regime since the headquarters were located in the town of Vichy. The Vichy government (10 July 1940 – 9 August 1944) wilfully collaborated with Nazi Germany, participated in Jewish expulsions and turned France into a quasi-police state. From March 1944, Éveline was head of the NAP network.

After the Liberation of France, Éveline and Andrée joined the ministère des Anciens combattants de la Résistance et des Déportés (Ministry of Veterans of the Resistance and Deportees). For over fifty Éveline and Andrée were in a relationship, until Éveline's death.

War Honours

• Médaille de la Résistance française (1945)
• Croix de guerre 1939-1945 avec palme (1946)
• Chevalière de la Légion d'honneur (1946)

Commemorations: On the 75th anniversary of the Liberation of Paris (29 August 2019), the Allee Éveline-Garnier and the Allee Andrée-Jacob were inaugurated in the 2nd arrondissement of Paris.

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... Frieda father, Aron Belinfante, was a prominent pianist and music teacher in Amsterdam who was the first pianist to present the entire cycle of Beethoven piano sonatas during a single (in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw - one of the finest concert halls in the world due to it's superb acoustics). Aged 17, she made her debut, playing the cello at the Concertgebouw . Frieda's repertoire spanned all periods including works from the Baroque to contemporary living composers of the period. As a guest conductor, she made weekly appearances on the Dutch National Radio, and conducted orchestras across the Netherlands and in Northern Europe. In 1937, the Het Klein Orkest, a chamber orchestra, was formed which she was the artistic director and conductor, making her the first woman in Europe to be artistic director and conductor of an ongoing professional orchestral ensemble.

Despite the Netherlands being neutral, at the start of WWII, Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands on 10 May 1940. Frieda managed to hold her position at the Het Klein Orkest until 1941 but she was target for the Nazis - she was half-Jewish, and... gay. During the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, Frieda joined a Dutch resistance group. She helped arrange hiding places for those who were sought by the Nazis and forged identity documents for people hiding from the Nazis and their collaborators. In March 1943, she helped plan an attack to blow up the Amsterdam Population Registry - to prevent the Nazis from discovering which documents were forged. The operation was declared a partial success and the explosion led to the destruction of 800,000 Jewish IDs (15% of those kept there). After many other members of the Netherlands-based gay resistance group were executed in 1943 by occupying Nazi authorities, she was driven to hide herself.

To hide from Nazi authorities: "For three months I was disguised as a man, and very successfully... I passed my mother several times … she never recognized me."

In December 1943, Frieda escaped to Switzerland staying in a Swiss refuge camp and four years later immigrated to the United States (in 1947).

Frida had a seven year relationship (1920 – 1927) with Dutch Jewish composer Henriëtte Bosmans and in 1923, Frida premiered Henriëtte' Second Cello Concerto. The relationship dissolved when Frida got married to a flute player but the marriage only lasted five years. Thereafter, Frida stayed swung back to girls.

Incredulously, while living in America, Frida was fired, in 1962, from being the manager of Orange County’s Philharmonic (the first woman in this position) for being a lesbian. A man who coveted her position, informed the board of directors regarding her sexual orientation, and she was fired. The humiliation of being fired for her sexual orientation made Frieda sadly choose not to return to a public position, and she spent the rest of her life as a private cello teacher. How utterly unjust and robbed. Imagine the beautiful music she would have shared with the public and they would have enjoyed. And the bitterest pill... she survived Nazi persecution (and fought back) but, as such, didn't survive American homophobia.

Frieda's recorded output was sparse and poorly maintained. Though none of the pre-war recorded radio performances survive, critical reviews exist internationally that document Frieda's musical talent.

War Decorations: ?

Frieda Belinfante's life is the subject of two documentaries But I Was a Girl (1998) and Willem & Frieda - Defying Nazis (2023) by Stephen Fry. Watch Frieda Belinfante's interview, for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, recorded sadly, nine months before she passed away when she was aged ninety.

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Andrée Jacob was born in Paris into a family of shopkeepers who, in the previous generation, had converted from Judaism to Catholicism. Before the outbreak of war Andrée had worked as a civil servant at the Palais de Chaillot Museum and was in a relationship with French Librarian Éveline Garnier.

Following the German occupation of France, as Andrée had Jewish heritage to avoid anti-semitic persecution she took on a new identity as Marie-Thérèse Bourdon. Members of her extended family, however, were arrested, imprisoned and deported to concentration camps: her cousins were arrested in January 1944, and deported to Auschwitz concentration camp (Poland) and their brother Max Jacob died in Drancy internment camp (France‎) in March 1944. Andrée did manage to smuggle her parents out of Paris into the Free French zone, where they were able in her partner's family home.

Under the codename "Danielle", Andrée joined the French resistance. She and her partner Éveline helped save Jews and provided them with false papers. She was also very active in the Noyautage des administrations publiques (NAP) network, based at the Palais de Chaillot, which aimed to infiltrate the collaborationist Vichy Government. Of the 14 members of the original NAP network, only 4 escaped the Gestapo: two of them were Andrée Jacob (codename Danielle) and Éveline Garnie (codename Anne).

During the Liberation of Paris, at the end of August 1944, ahead of a French Forces of the Interior platoon, Andrée arrested the Vichy director Bernard Faÿ at the Bibliothèque nationale de France and saved the library's archives.

After the Liberation of France, Éveline and Andrée joined the Ministère des Anciens combattants de la Résistance et des Déportés (Ministry of Veterans of the Resistance and Deportees). She also became head of the archives department at the Ministère des Anciens combattants (Ministry of Veterans' Affairs). In 1963 she was elected deputy mayor of the 2nd arrondissement of Paris and from 1965 to 1985, she worked as a journalist for the newspaper Le Monde.

For over fifty Éveline and Andrée were in a relationship, until Éveline's death.

War Honours

• Médaille de la Résistance française (1945)
• Croix de guerre 1939-1945 avec palme (1946)
• Chevalière de la Légion d'honneur (1946)
• Croix de guerre 1939-1945 (1945)
• Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur (1946)
• Officier de la Légion d'honneur (1965)
• Officier de l'instruction publique
• Officier de l'ordre du Mérite du Bénin
• Chevalier des Arts et Lettres

Commemorations: On the 75th anniversary of the Liberation of Paris (29 August 2019), the Allee Éveline-Garnier and the Allee Andrée-Jacob were inaugurated in the 2nd arrondissement of Paris.

PS Vichy director Bernard Faÿ was not only anti-Semitic, he was anti-Freemasons too. During his tenure with the Vichy regime, 989 Freemasons were sent to concentration camps, where 549 were shot. But it seems he may not have been anti-lesbian. Apparently he protected Gertrude Stein and her partner Alice B. Toklas who were living in France. When Bernard Faÿ was tried as a collaborator, Gertrude Stein wrote a letter on Faÿ's behalf. In 1946, a French court condemned him to dégradation nationale ("National demotion") and forced labour for life, but he managed to escape to Switzerland in 1951, the funding of the escape came from Alice B. Toklas.

In 1959 Bernard Faÿ was pardoned by French President René Coty. This questions Gertrude Stein's stance during WWII. Although Jewish, Gertrude Stein collaborated with Vichy France, a regime that deported more than 75,000 Jews to Nazi concentration camps, of whom only three percent survived the Holocaust. After the war she continued to praise Marshal Philippe Pétain, even when Pétain had been sentenced to death by a French court for treason.

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... agent and civil rights activist. Her life is so incredible I couldn't keep her bio short! Being billed as "the highest-paid chorus girl in vaudeville" landed Baker an opportunity to tour in Paris. Swiftly, she became the toast of Paris and an iconic image and a symbol of the Jazz Age and the Roaring Twenties, appearing practically nude onstage in her self-designed costume comprising short skirt of artificial bananas and a beaded necklace. Among her various performance accolades Josephine became the first Black woman to star in a major motion picture, the silent film Siren of the Tropics (1927).

Though she was married four times she had many lesbian affairs. Co-author and an unofficial adopted son, Jean-Claude Baker's biography "Josephine: The Hungry Heart" mentions six of her lady lovers: Bessie Allison (a performer who later became the first African-American woman to hold a seat in the New York State Legislature, Clara Smith ( "Queen of the Moaners"), and actresses Evelyn Sheppard, and Mildred Smallwood, all of whom she met on the black performing circuit during her early years onstage in the United States and when she relocated to Paris: expat jazz singer Ada "Bricktop" Smith, and the French novelist Colette. Perhaps her most famous of her lovers, was Mexican artist Frida Kahlo who she during Kahlo's trip to Paris in 1939. Awkwardly, Frieda Kahlo was travelling with her husband, muralist Diego Rivera.

When WWII broke out, and Paris was occupied by the Third Reich, Josephine was recruited by French Resistance. Taking advantage of the occupiers’ trust, she risked her life on clandestine work for the Allies. Her celebrity and fame opened doors, and in social gatherings she rubbed shoulders with and charmed high ranking Nazi personnel, and officials to collect information.

To boot, as an international entertainer, she had an excuse to travel which she did within Nazi-occupied Europe, to neutral Portugal, and to South America. Risking her life, courageously, Josephine smuggled coded messages, written in invisible ink on her music sheets, between the French Resistance and the Allies. The messages contained crucial military intelligence about for example German troop concentrations, airfields, harbours, and defences. If this wasn't enough, she also heroically hid fugitives in her home, supplying them with forged identification papers and visas obtained through her clandestine contacts. Commissioned as a lieutenant, later in the war, she joined the French Women's Auxiliary Air Force and preformed shows for Allied troops to keep their spirits up. An utter heroine. After Frances liberation, she returned to Paris in October 1944, she was greeted by throngs of people on the Champs-Élysées welcoming her home.

In recognition of her wartime heroics, Josephine deservedly was awarded:

• Resistance Medal - by the French Committee of National Liberation
• Croix de guerre (Medal of Resistance ) - by the French military
• Chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur - by General Charles de Gaulle

Why did Paris and France become her home? When she would return to America she was continuously greeted with racism. In one example, in the 1950s her husband and herself were refused reservations at 36 hotels because of racial discrimination. Over the years she gave talks on the subject of racism, challenged segregation laws and marched for civil rights with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at the historic March on Washington in 1963. She was so vociferous in her denunciations of American racism at various international forums that she ended up on the FBI watch list and lost her US citizenship rights for over a decade.

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Catherine "Toto" Koopman was born in Java, 1908, to a Dutch cavalry officer, Jan George Koopman and Catharina Johanna Westrik, who was part Javanese and part Dutch. After attending a prestigious boarding school in the Netherlands and much to her parents disappointment left early from an English finishing school, to move to Paris to pursue a modelling career.

Toto Koopman modelled haute couture for distinguished designers such as Coco Chanel, Madeleine Vionnet, Main Bocher and Marcel Rochas and, was photographed by esteemed fashion photographers, including Edward Steichen and George Hoyningen-Huene. Not only was Toto one of the first famous biracial models but also, one of the earliest known photographed cover models for Vogue Paris magazine (August 1933 edition), which had previously only featured illustrations of models.

Toto played for both teams! After a fling with renowned American actress Tallulah Bankhead, in 1934, she had an affair in London with William Maxwell Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook, a Canadian-British newspaper empresario thirty years her senior and ... his son, Max Aitken! Not wishing to marry Max and tired of London she moved to Florence, in the Autumn of 1939.

In Italy, she began a relationship with a leader of the anti-Mussolini resistance and sold her furs and jewellery to help fund his anti-fascist group. When WWII broke out, she utilised her language skills (on top of her mother Dutch tongue, she could speak fluent English, French, German and Italian) and her list of valuable contacts to become a spy for the Italian Resistance. She infiltrated meetings of the Blackshirts - Mussolini's all-volunteer militia and feedback crucial info to the Resistance.

Unfortunately she was caught and apprehended by the Italian Police in 1941, and was detained in prisons in Milan and Lazio before being sent to the Massa Martana detention camp (Umbria). Daringly she escaped the camp and went into hiding in the mountains around Perugia. Though she managed to make contact with a local resistance group and helped other camp escapees connect to Resistance networks and make their way to safety, she was recaptured. Amazingly she managed to escape again but fled further afield to Venice.

At first Toto laid low - an aristocratic friend smuggled her into a secret suite at the luxury Danieli Hotel, Riva degli Schiavoni, Venice. One night, her friend was tipped off that the Germans intended to search the Danieli to ferret out spies. In a brazen gambit, her friend threw an opulent dinner "in honour" of the German general in charge of the operation and seated him directly next to Toto! Dressed to impress, stunningly beautiful and flirtatious, Toto was so conspicuous that it never occurred to the Germans to suspect her as a spy and two time detention camp escapee! A few weeks later, her luck ran out when she was informed upon and arrested. This time, Toto was deported to the Ravensbrück concentration camp, 90 km north of Berlin, Germany - the largest women's-only camp in the Third Reich.

Cunning as ever she convinced camp officials that she was a nurse who had trained at St. Mary’s Hospital, London. It is likely that her assignment to work with the camp's medical team, in the camp’s infirmary, probably saved her life. She still tried to help and often sneaked food to the patients assigned to her care. Just before Ravensbrück was liberated in April 1945, the Swedish Red Cross' Vice President, Count Folk Bernadotte, managed to convince Heinrich Himmler to release 7,500 women to their care. Ravensbrück released several hundred prisoners, including Koopman, to the care of the Red Cross in Sweden.

Former lovers came to her aid - Lord Beaverbrook and Randolph Churchill (the son of Sir Winston) who helped her obtain new clothing, a new passport. In 1945, Toto travelled to Switzerland, Ascona, on the coast of Lake Maggiore, to recuperate from her awful experience of Ravensbrück. There she met German art dealer Erica Brausen, who would become her lover and with whom she would spend the rest of her life, in an open relationship.

German born, out lesbian, Erica Brausen (1908 - 1992) had also played her own distinguished role in the Resistance during WW2. Erica had left Germany in the early 1930s for Paris and in 1935 moved to the island of Majorca, Spain. In Majorca, under the code name “Beryl,” Erica had run an underground resistance operation helping Jews and socialists evade Genera Franco's naval blockade, during the Spanish Civil Wars and had ferried the writers Michel Leiris and Raymond Queneau to safety aboard a U.S. submarine.

Erica and Toto opened the Hanover Gallery, London, which became one of the most influential galleries in Europe, exhibiting works by innovative artists: Alberto Giacometti, Francis Bacon, Henri Matisse, Henry Moore, Joan Miró, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst and William Scott. Adventurous as ever, in the 1950s Toto studied at the University of London and took part in several archaeological excavations.

War Decorations: ? :(

Commemorations: ? :(

Book: The Many Lives of Miss K: Toto Koopman (2013) by Jean-Noël Liaut | Toto & Coco (2020) by Alan Frame

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Thérèse was from Épernay, northern France and before WWII she was a teacher and had participated in communist activities. While teaching at a preparatory school in Nancy, circa 1927, she met teacher and writer Emma Pitoizet and after falling in love they lived together. By 1935, however, they had split as Emma wanted to have children.

In 1942, in Carhaix (Brittany) she met a Finistere Resistance official (who later became Lieutenant-Colonel Pascal) and joined the French resistance. By September 1942, under the alias of Madeleine, she was the head of the Fougères resistance group and was responsible for more than a hundred men. She participated in the organisation of Francs-Tireurs et Partisans groups (formed by the French Communist Party) and was in contact with regional chiefs and with other resistance fighters.

On October 23, 1943, Thérèse was arrested in Fougères by the Sicherheitsdienst (SD, SS Intelligence Service), and transferred to Rennes. As with so many others, the details of her death are not well known. In the Jacques-Cartier Prison, she was tortured, beaten ... (one can't imagine what she went through) for two consecutive days. Remarkably she managed to communicate with other prisoners through the central heating channel. Fellow prisoner Madame Lequeu, of Dol-de-Bretagne, was in contact with her: Thérèse sobbing, screaming in pain, tirelessly repeated: "I will not speak ... They will not make me talk." Towards the end of the second day, Madame Lequeu heard Thérèse's last words. Thérèse defiantly said: "They got nothing from me." The next morning, Thérèse was found hanging from the bars of her jail, from one of her stockings. It was alleged to be a German-staged suicide.

Thérèse Pierre died: in Jacques-Cartier Prison, Rennes, France on 26 October 1943 - she was 34 years old

War Decorations

• Knight of the Legion of Honour
• The Order of the Division
• The medal of the French resistance
• War Cross with Silver Star.

Thérèse Pierre Commemorative Plaques: Two schools bear her name, including the college Thérèse-Pierre de Fougères and there are various commemorative plaques bearing her name e.g. on facade of the house she lived at 32, rue des Prés in Fougères, Châlons-en-Champagne in Marne

Book: Elles vivaient d’espoir (2010) by Claudie Hunzinger

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Elvira's deceptive communications to the Nazis are credited with preventing the 11th Panzer Division from reinforcing German forces at Normandy. As Elvira Concepción Josefina de la Fuente Chaudoir's father was a successful businessman and Peruvian diplomat, she had a well-to-do upbringing, being raised in Paris, attending private school, and could speak fluent Spanish, French, and English.

In 1938, after an unhappy marriage, classy “good-time girl” Elvira moved to Cannes with her "girl friend" Romy Gilbey where she joined the flamboyant international smart gambling set. When the Germans invaded France in 1939, Elvira and Romy fled to England to continue their partying and gambling.

Aware of her gambling losses and her "boredom", under the pseudonym "Mr. Masefield", Lieutenant Colonel Claude Dansey, assistant chief of M16, approached Elvira. He enlisted her to work for MI6 to become a double agent! As her father was living in France and was the Peruvian chargé d'affaires to the French Vichy government and she had a Peruvian passport, she could travel to France under the pretext of visiting him. Not only could she report on what was happening there but also engage in “coat-trailing” - let herself be recruited by the Germans and on behalf of MI6, provide false intelligence to the Germans.

In a flat in Knightsbridge she was taught the basics of spying and how to use invisible ink to send reports to the British, hidden within seemingly unremarkable letters.

Elvira returned to France under her first code name "Cyril". In true comic book spy fashion, in a Cannes casino, spring of 1941, she was approached by Henri Chauvel, a wealthy French Nazi collaborator. Through him, she met Helmut Bliel, a German spy who went by the nickname of "Bibi".

The Abwehr (the German military-intelligence service) were interested in Elvira because of their perception that she had access to influential diplomatic circles as her father had served in England as a Peruvian diplomat, before being assigned to Vichy France. After several dates, German spy Helmut suggested that Elvira could make money to feed her gambling habit by providing political, financial, and industrial information about Britain to his unnamed "friends".

Helmut provided Elvira with her second bottle of invisible ink, was given the code name "Dorette" and she was to receive £100 a month, disguised as alimony payments, from her ex-husband. Upon returning to England, Elvira reported to MI6, who debriefed her and handed her to MI5 to be put utilised as a double agent. Despite MI5's unfavourable background checks (her “lesbian” tendencies were seen to be easy blackmail material) and objections by John Masterman who was chairman of the Twenty Committee, Elvira was cautiously added to the Double-Cross System team on October 28, 1942, with a new code name, "Bronx" (after the rum-based cocktail) and given a cover job at the BBC.

Under direction of her Double Cross handler, Elvira began writing letters in invisible ink to her German handler, writing in a unique style filled with gossip, half-truths, full lies, and banalities. German communications to Elvira indicated that they trusted her reliability as their agent, and her handler in MI5 described Elvira as "probably one of our most reliable agents."

Prevention of Gas Warfare - One of her letters to the Germans, claimed that the British had made excellent preparations to defend against gas warfare as well as stockpiling large amounts of chemical weapons for retaliation. John Masterman (chairman of the Twenty Committee) believed her letter helped dissuade the Germans from using poison gas against England.

Protection of D-Day - One of the greatest deceptions that the Double Cross team are credited for was Operation FORTITUDE - a concerted attempt to redirect German attention and disguise the true location of the Allied invasion of Normandy.

As part of Operation COCKADE, Elvira informed the Germans that the invasion of France was planned for September 1944, rather than June, as were other Double Cross agents sending similar misinformation to their contacts in corroboration. The Germans, however, failed to react.

The Germans, however, became increasingly anxious for immediate information about any invasion plans, so Helmut instructed Elvira to send a telegram (as mail was too slow) indicating when and where the invasion would occur, to a Lisbon bank run by a corrupt manager who would pass it on to German agents. As the telegram could not make use of invisible ink, locations were mapped to specific amounts of money. Elvira was to send a telegram requesting a specific amount from the bank, which would indicate the location of the invasion, and the reason would be decoded to indicate her certainty and timeline for the invasion.

Elvira's main contribution was in support of Plan IRONSIDE, a mythical attack on the Atlantic coast of France which succeeded in persuading the Germans to retain a Panzer Division in the Bordeaux area at the time of the Normandy invasion.

Planning the invasion, the Allies were concerned about the German forces on the west coast of France, fearing they would mobilise to reinforce the Germans at Normandy. In support of Operation OVERLORD, Elvira was instructed to send a telegram on May 27, 1944: "Envoyez vite cinquante livres. J'ai besoin pour mon dentiste" ("Send fifty pounds quickly. I need it for my dentist."). The bank manager immediately passed it on to German intelligence. In Berlin, the message was decoded to mean "I have definite news that a landing is to be made in the Bay of Biscay in one week." (wow - what a code). An entire German tank division (11th Panzer Division) was waiting at the Bay of Biscay, south of France, when the Allies landed at Normandy. Masterman credited Chaudoir's telegram for the 11th Panzer Division remaining in the southwest of France to defend against an attack that never came. The false information that Elvira gave was directly responsible for Das Reich North's mobilisation away from Normandy, saving many Allied soldiers' lives and weakening German defences further.

When the D-Day invasion took place, Elvira sent mail to Helmut explaining why her warning had been incorrect, blaming it on her informant. After the initial landing at Normandy, Elvira and other Double Cross agents passed information to their German contacts that Normandy was just a diversion. Elvira's letter: "Only part of Allied force in Normandy operations, bulk remains here at present" and hinted at a second invasion.

Toward the end of the war, Elvira searched through the German hierarchy to find who might sue for peace. Courageously, she travelled to Madrid to meet with German intelligence, but was unable to locate any German spies. Keeping up her role, she later wrote to her handler a scathing letter, indicting she had expected a bonus and was livid no one had met her. Agent Bronx retired with the war.

A woman who loved parties, gambling and "favour[ed] the companionship of women who may not be careful of their virginity," Elvira Chaudoir is an unsung hero who was instrumental in passing misinformation to the Germans and cleverly deceived the German intelligence system over and over to save Allied lives.

Did she play on our team? Though she married aged 23, to Belgian banker Jean Chaudoir, after four years and apparent affairs she fled the marriage, to southern France. When MI5 investigated her background, they registered their concern about her "lesbian tendencies" ... also she had a "close" friendship with English horse racing breeder, Ms Monica Sheriffe who owned champion British thoroughbred sprinter, Sharpo. I'm including her, herein :)

After the wars end, she ran a gift shop l'Heure Bleu, at Beaulieu-sur-Mer, South of France.

War decorations: ? Fifty years, after the war's end, in December 1995, MI5 sent Elvira Chaudoir a cheque for £5,000 in recognition of her war-time service - she died, a month later, in January 1996.

Book: Los Secretos de Elvira by Hugo Coya (2014) | Elvira Chaudoir Nationalarchives.gov.uk.

Commemorations: ?

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Marie-Thérèse came from Brittany, arrived in Paris in 1920 and after studying fine art, she made a living as an expressionist painter and poster illustrator.

When the German army invaded Paris in 1940, she joined a French resistance network. In the beginning, she would go in to the countryside and source food such as eggs, milk or chicken (which would have been considered contraband) and bring them back to occupied Paris. It was while sourcing some goods in Normandy that she met and fell in love with Noëlle Guillou who would become her life partner. Noëlle was also a resistance member and they became major figures of the Echauffour Resistance, supplying Parisian resistance fighters with local produce from Normandy.

Together they started moving more than contraband. Marie-Thérèse and Noëlle saved Allied paratroopers who landed in the Normandy countryside, hid them in their house and helped them get to Paris by train. Super courageous - to get to Paris, the Allied soldier would be disguised as a Frenchman while Marie-Thérèse posed as his girlfriend. If a German soldier would get nosy, she would open a suitcase full of saucy lacey underwear to make the soldier uncomfortable and try to avoid them starting a conversation with the supposed lover. In Paris, she would hide the Ally in her house and workshop ( 21 rue Gazan ), before connecting them with other underground networks to get them back to their armies. Among the paratroopers she saved was American aviator Arnold Pederson whose plane had crashed between La Ferté-Fresnel and Échauffour, for which U.S. President Eisenhower paid tribute to her.

After the wars end, in 1945, Auffray exhibited at the Galerie Drouant-David and the Galerie Lucy Krohg, in Paris. In 1947, she and Noëlle Guillou opened Le Bateau Ivre (The Drunken Boat), an atypical inn, book-shop and discotheque in Normandy.

Commemorations: Marie-Thérèse Auffray Park, a public garden, was inaugurated in 2019 in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, in the district where Marie-Thérèse Auffray had her studio and gallery.

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... Hilda Gobbi was born into an Italian family whose grandfather was Alois Gobbi, a well-known Hungarian composer and conductor. After studying at the Academy of Drama and Film (1932 to 1935) in Budapest (which at the time was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) she began performing at the National Theater.

Over fifty years Hilda performed on stage, film and radio in a wide range of productions from comedy to tragedy, and was noted for her humour and caricatures, particularly for her portrayals of elderly women. One of her most popular performances was her role as Aunt Szabó in the Hungarian radio soap opera, The Szabó Family.

During the Nazi occupation of Hungary, Hilda worked with the Resistance - her father created forged documents to exempt men from military service (to fight for the Germans), which she distributed.

Hilda was a very kind lady: founding two homes to care for elderly actors (the Árpád Horváth Actor's College (1947) and Árpád Ódry (1950) and the Gizi Bajor Actor's Museum (1952). On her 70th birthday, in 1983, she received a monetary prize which she offered to have the National Theater refurbished. She left her estate to the National Theater with instructions to sell her home in Buda and use two-thirds of the proceeds to set up an annual award named the Aase Award, to be awarded to the season's best theatre production. The other third was to provide an actors' assistance fund.

Awards: Throughout her career, Hilda was awarded numerous honours, the: Wolf Ratko Prize (1941), the Kossuth Prize (1949), Artist of Merit (1950), Outstanding Artist (1955), the Labor Merit Gold Grade (1973), SZOT Prize (1977), Order of the Flag of the Republic of Hungary (1983), and The Order of the Enlightened Flag of the Hungarian People's Republic (1988)".

Hilda was very courageous - she was open about her lesbian orientation, often dressing in men's clothing. In Hungary, homosexuality was illegal until 1961 when homosexuality was... classified as a mental illness! From the late 1950s to 1960s she lived with Hédi Temessy (a well respected Hungarian actress) in Buda. When they split Hilda became the long time partner of the writer, Erzsébet Galgóczi who was 17 years younger than her.

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Ilse was born in Strasbourg, then part of Germany, to Alsacian actress Sofie Wilhelmine Huth and orchestra conductor Ernst Otto Totzke. Ilse studied piano, violin and conducting at the Bavarian State Conservatory, Würzburg, in 1932. She cut her studies short as she refused to give the Nazi salute, she hung out with Jews and "behaved as a lesbian". Ilse continued her friendships with Jews regardless of the anti-Semitic and racist Nuremberg Laws (of 15 September 1935) which prohibited relationships between Aryans and Jews.

Repeatedly, Ilse was denounced to the Gestapo on account of her friendliness to Jews and lack of patriotism. In October 1941 Ilse was taken in by the Gestapo and forced to sign a declaration stating that further disobedience would lead to her transfer to a concentration camp.

On one of her trips to Berlin (September 1942), Ilse was asked by the wife of a Würzburg Jew (Frau Strauss) to contact a Ruth Basinski (a German Jewish musician), in order to send a message to her son. Ruth and Ilse became friends - "special" friends? Back in Würzburg, Ilse received another summons to the Würzburg Gestapo and consequently came to the conclusion she needed to disappear underground.

After several unsuccessful attempts to meet Ruth in Berlin, on a visit to Berlin in February 8th, 1943, neighbours told Ilse that Ruth was most likely at the Judenlager (Jewish camp) on Auguststrasse, awaiting deportation to the East. Ilse did indeed find Ruth at the Judenlager and after a a few days managed to convince Ruth to flee with her to neutral Switzerland.

Despite not have the prerequisite papers, they started the arduous and dangerous journey, from Berlin to Switzerland, on 12 - 13 February. Swimming across a river, they illegally (yet successfully) crossed the border near Durmenach, almost a fortnight later, on the night of February 26-27. In Switzerland, they were, however, apprehended by Swiss customs guards and after questioning them, were sent back to the German border. The following night they again crossed the Swiss border but were caught, again. This time the Swiss customs guards handed them over to the to the German border police at St. Louis/Mulhouse. How utterly heart-breaking.

Ruth who was Jewish, was sent to the Gestapo authorities in Berlin who later deported her to Auschwitz. Being German, Ilse, was sent to Würzburg for questioning. In the course of Ilse's hearing, she made the following brave statement:

"I have been considering fleeing Germany for quite some time as I do not feel well under Hitler's rule. In particular, I have found the Nuremberg Laws to be incomprehensible and this is also the reason why I continued to maintain contact with the Jews who were my acquaintances."

Ilse was sent to Ravensbrück Concentration Camp on 12 May 1943 and managed to survive until Ravensbrück was liberated by the Soviet forces, on April 30, 1945.

Ruth Basinski, who as a gifted flutist, was assigned to the prisoners orchestra in Auschwitz (The Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz), and managed to survive until Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviet forces, 27 January 1945

Alas not much is known about their lives after the war.

War Decorations: Ilse Totzke was recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations, on 23 March 1995.

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Moved by a patriotic desire to help the war effort, aged 23, Phillis Abry enlisted in the US Women's Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC), in March 1943. During the WAAC's recruitment process Phillis hid her sexuality, as homosexuals were not allowed to serve in the American forces (as was the rule too in the UK). She certainly didn't confess, that as as a teenager, she had been expelled from her private high school after the school found a love letter she had written to another girl. While completing a radio repairman's course at the United Radio Television Institute she met fellow WAAC, Mildred and they became partners.

In the winter of 1944, Phillis worked as a recruiter for the WAC and became a recruitment poster pin-up - a poster featured her inspecting a radio together with Mildred (her clandestine girlfriend!) Unbeknown - the military had selected two homosexuals to represent the ideal image of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps!

From August 1945, through March 1946, Phillis was stationed in Paris. When she returned home, she received an honourable discharge. The two split when when Phillis left for college at the University of Nevada in Reno, Nevada - where she met her future husband. Phillis appears in the documentary Coming Out Under Fire.

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... Sometimes called the "Greek Blues", Rebetiko, was an influential genre of Greek musicSotiria sang in the best music clubs of Athens. As the times changed, and rebetiko was no longer sought after, Sotiria, like many other artists of her generation, found very little work in night clubs. In the mid-1960s rebetiko was rediscovered by a new generation, which peaked in the 1980s.

Sotiria was also a political activist who joined the Greek Resistance against the Axis occupation of Greece during World War II. The Axis powers (originally called the Rome–Berlin Axis), was a military coalition that opposed the Allied powers in WWII and comprised: Nazi Germany, Italy, and Japan. She was caught by the Nazis for selling an illegal communist newspaper in the streets of Athens, tortured and then imprisoned. As a member of the Greek People's Liberation Army (ELAS), in 1944, Sotiria participated in the Dekemvriana which was a series of clashes in Athens, just months after liberation, from 3 December 1944 to 11 January 1945 between the commELAS and the Greek government and some British forces. During the civil war she supported the leftists and was caught at least once and kept in detention.

After Sotiria's disastrous marriage ended, in a time when it was practically unheard of in Greece, she lived courageously as a fairly out lesbian.

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Renée's pedigree was top notch - she was the daughter of Swiss General Ulrich Wille (the Head of the Swiss Army during World War I and son of novelist Eliza Wille) and Countess Clara von Bismarck (daughter of German diplomat Count Friedrich Wilhelm Bismarck). Renée held political sympathies with Hitler and saw the rise of Nazism as a way of overcoming the humiliating Treaty of Versailles and subsequent economic turmoil. German diplomats in Switzerland praised her loyalty to the Nazi cause and after WW II, Renée Schwarzenbach-Wille helped German Nazis who had fled to Switzerland to escape the Allies. Her lesbian daughter, writer and photographer Annemarie Schwarzenbach was proactively anti-Nazis.

Although she married Alfred Schwarzenbach, a wealthy businessman in the silk industry in 1904 and had five children, she also had a long-term affair with the German opera singer Emmy Krüger.

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... Lea's whistling repertoire included musical pieces from operas, waltzes, classical and popular songs... while dressed in her trademark "Biedermeier gentleman's suit" and hair worn short and slicked back.

Pre WWII, Lea performed in major vaudeville shows in the big cities across Europe, the UK South Africa and USA.

When Jews and other targeted groups in society were being persistently and increasingly persecuted, as were certain social behaviours, in 1940, Lea Manti's career was on the rise again. She whistled across Germany in Essen, Kassel, Würzburg... as well as in, occupied areas. In the summer of 1941, Manti performed for the German soldiers stationed in Riga, Latvia, at the Apollo-Theater Augsburg 's "Parade of Sensations". Her performances stopped in 1944, when Joseph Goebbels issued a total "theater ban," and all theaters were forced to close.

For me - Lea Manti performing for German soldiers makes her a cold-blooded, fame-seeking, profiteering, Nazi sympathiser. Learn more from lesbengeschichte.org

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Mary Wigman (born Karoline Sophie Marie Wiegmann) was a German pioneer of modern expressionist dance, dance therapy, and movement training without ballet shoes. Her choreographic repertoire spanned more than 45 years and includes works that were vital in establishing modern dance's stature as an art form. She never made a political statement on the war years and even after the end of the war.

Though she was privately sympathetic to Jewish students in her Dresden school, she didn't rebel against orders to remove Jewish dancers from her company. At the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, Mary choreographed and performed Lament for the Dead, with music composed by Carl Orff and supported by eighty female dancers all dressed in grey mourning the dead of World War I. But, a year later, Reich Minister of Propaganda, Goebbels decreed that dance "must be cheerful and show beautiful female bodies and have nothing to do with philosophy". The Third Reich saw Mary as an anti-establishment figure and decadent artist. It has been suggested that she closed her Dresden dance school only when her protector died in 1942 - who was a prominent arms manufacturer. Hanns Benkert.

So, was she a Nazi sympathiser? Since her death there has been research focussed on her time living and performing as a performer within the Third Reich. See 'Degenerate Dance': The Case of Mary Wigman by Carole Kew

Was she a lesbian / or bi? Hmmm. She was never married and she may have had a "close friendship" with Bertha Trümpy.

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Violette's life was full of controversary in her career as an athlete, charged for murder and her sexuality. In 1914, Violette married Cyprien Edouard Joseph Gouraud but they divorced nine years later. Later she became openly gay and her lovers included Josephine Baker and actress Yvonne de Bray. Athlete - you name it, she did it! She won two gold and a silver medal at the Women's World Games hosted in Paris, in 1922 for shot put and Javelin throw.

Nazis Collaborator: The Nazis noted that she was internationally renowned athlete and thought, due to her struggle with the French, they could switch her loyalties to the Germans. In 1936, Hitler invited Violette to Berlin to watch the Olympic Games and charm her. After the Berlin Olympics it is speculated that Violette returned to France as a Nazi spy. The French media depict Violette Morris as a sadistic Nazi torturer, and that she was involved with the French Gestapo. The extent of Violette's involvement with the Nazis is unknown. It is reported that Violette supplied black-market oil for the Nazis, ran a garage for the Luftwaffe, and drove for both the Nazis and Vichy hierarchy. Violette Morris was tried in absentia, found guilty by the French resistance and charged with spying for the Germans and leaking Allied military plans to the Nazis. Before the D-Day invasion, orders came from London to take out any would-be Gestapo agents and Violette's name was on that list.

On April 26, 1944, Violette Morris was driving on a country road through Normandy with the Bailleul family, who were favourably positioned with the Nazi regime in France. The car engine suddenly and mysteriously came to a stop upon which French Resistance fighters emerged from nearby bushes. Violette Morris, two adults and two children in the car, were killed in the spray of gunfire. There's no smoke without a fire... for Violette Morris to be assinated by French Resistance fighters must have been an act of fatal revenge for her activities as an informer.

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Suzy was not only openly gay she flaunted it with nonchalance, singing erotic lesbian songs to her titillated audiences. On a really sour note, during the occupation of Paris, by The Third Reich, Suzy's nightclub, "La Vie Parisienne", was popular with German officers and in 1941 she recorded a version of the song Lili Marleen (two years before Marlene Dietrich released her version) with French words by Henri Lemarchand. Understandably this was not taken well and after the liberation of Paris on 25 August 1944, she was convicted by the Épuration légale as a collaborator and was exiled from France. She left for the United States in 1946 but returned to Paris where she opened Chez Suzy Solidor, in 1954. She retired to Haut-de-Cagnes south of France, opening Chez Suzy another cabaret decorated with her many portraits.

Some researchers believe that Suzy was helping the Resistance by overhearing Nazi officers' conversations and that she also helped several Jews to escape. To date, there is no proof of the aforementioned and surely that proof would have been presented during her trial for alleged Nazi collaboration. One has to question why The Nazi officers overlooked Suzy Solidor's overtly Sapphic performances yet in Berlin, at the same time, openly out Claire Waldoff was banned from performing.

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Ans van Dijk was born in Amsterdam to Jewish parents. When her husband discovered she was having affairs with women their eight year marriage ended. Circa 1940, Ans began a lesbian relationship with her co-worker Christina "Miep" Stodel (born 1917) who moved in with her and worked in Ans' millinery shop, "Maison Evany", in Amsterdam. The shop was closed by the Nazis, in November 1941, as part of the Nazis' seizure of Jewish property - from henceforth, Jews were forbidden to own businesses or work in retail shops, amongst other occupational restrictions.

From that moment on, Ans disguised herself by dyeing her hair blonde and obtaining a fake identity card in the name of Alphonsia Maria (Annie) de Jong. Miep was also Jewish but could longer the hack the persecution and, fled to neutral Switzerland in July 1942.

In the beginning, apparently Ans did help several Jews to safe houses and traded in goods from Jewish households. As the persecution of the Jews worsened, in January 1943 she went into hiding with a family in the Marco Polostraat (no. 192 II). Luck ran out for her - she was betrayed. On 26 April 1943 (Easter Monday?), she was arrested by the Jewish Affairs Office of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD; the Nazi intelligence service). Notorious Jew hunter / Dutch police detective Pieter Schaap heavy-handedly interrogated her. To escape further punishment and deportation, Ans "decided" to work for him as a 'V-woman' (collaborator).

Ans was utilised as a celspionne (cell spy). Zealously, she became 'the best V-woman of the SD' and a fanatical leader of a group of Jewish traitors which included Branca Simons (born 1918) and Rosalie Roozendaal (born 1924), who were all Jews. Ans pretended to: be a member of the resistance, offered help to Jews seeking hiding places and to obtain false papers for them. Even more despicable, Ans and Branca were regularly placed in a cell with arrested Jews and obtained further information from the prisoners, as they masqueraded as fellow prisoners.

During this evil time, Ans earned considerable wealth. She started a new relationship with a single mother Johanna Maria "Mies" de Regt (born 1907). From September 1943, they lived in a home of deported Jews, in Jekerstraat 46 II in Amsterdam-Zuid which had been recommended by the Jewish Affairs Office. That house acted as an awfully successful 'Jew trap', where people in hiding walked straight into the arms of the SD.

How many victims did Ans van Dijk? This awful number varies. Ans trapped at least 145 people, including... her own brother and his family. Some 85 of her victims later died in concentration camps. According to some estimates, she and the "Jew hunters" she managed were responsible for the capture of as many as 700 Jews. Recently, it has been suggested that she may have betrayed Anne Frank and her family.

On Tuesday September 5th 1944, ("Dolle Dinsdag" or "Mad Tuesday") the Dutch Prime Minister Gerbrandy announced via the Radio Oranje that the allied army had crossed the border and Breda had been liberated. Like many other German soldiers, for fear of retaliation, many collaborators were afraid to stay in the Netherlands. Ans moved with Mies to The Hague, where they lived until April 1945, and then to Rotterdam-Zuid.

Ans was arrested at a friend's home on 20 June 1945, in the Hague and charged with 23 counts of treason. On 24 February 1947, she was brought to the Special Court in Amsterdam. Faced with her crimes, Van Dijk confessed only to the irrefutable cases – a total of 23. Where possible, she denied and placed the blame on her former colleagues. Her defence was that she only acted out of self-preservation and where possible, she placed the blame on her former colleagues. However, her superior, Willy Lages, had described Ans van Dijk as eager to do her job, for which she was paid for every person she helped find. She appealed the conviction, but in September 1947 the Special Court of Appeals confirmed her punishment. Her request for a royal pardon from the Queen was also rejected.

On 14 January 1948, aged 42, Ans van Dijk was executed by a twelve-headed firing squad at Fort Bijlmer, Netherlands. Bizarrely, the night before her execution she requested to baptised and joined the Roman Catholic Church.

• Ans van Dijk - was executed, on 14 January 1948
• Maria "Mies" de Regt (Ans' partner) - ?
• Pieter Schaap - executed, 29 June 1949
• Branca Simons - was initially sentenced to death by the Special Court after the war. She was pardoned and her sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. In 1958, Simons' sentence was reduced to twenty years and was released in 1959.
• Rosalie Roozendaal - on September 12, 1947, the Special Court demanded four years in imprisonment but considering Roosendaal's young age and difficult circumstances Roozendaal was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison, minus the pre-trial detention. That same year, Roosendaal was released again.

FYI the most notorious female "Jew hunter" was Berliner Stella Goldschlag who came from an assimilated Jewish family. The number of victims she betrayed or delivered to the Nazis is hard to calculate but is estimated to be anywhere from 600 to 3,000.

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... a crucial role in Joseph Goebbels entertainment industry and Nazi propaganda. Perhaps to fill the gap left by Marlene Dietrich, in 1936, Zarah was contracted to work for the state-owned Universum Film AG (UFA), Berlin, which was Goebbels' key Nazi propaganda vehicle and starred in ten films. She revealed that she made her a fortune not from her UFA roles, but through the royalties from the records she released during this time such as Davon geht die Welt nicht unter (This is not the end of the world) and Ich weiss, es wird einmal ein Wunder geschehen (I know that someday a miracle will happen") which have been cited as examples of effective Nazi propaganda.

Even though her work for the Nazis was extremely controversial, Post-war, she became a major gay icon in Sweden, Germany and internationally. Was she a cold-blooded, fame-seeking, profiteering, Nazi sympathiser? Or was she in fact a spy? Niklas Wahllöf, in "Var Zarah Leander Sovjetspion?" (2003), reported that just before his death, Soviet Intelligence Officer Pavel Sudoplatov claimed, that Zarah Leander had been a Soviet agent with the codename "Rose-Marie". Moreover, Sudoplatov claimed Zarah was a secret member of the Swedish Communist Party and conducted her work for The Nazis for political reasons. Hmm?

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A Nazi Party member from 1940, Anneliese initially worked as a tram conductor in Hamburg. November 1944, Kohlmann joined the SS Women's Auxiliary and was appointed as an Aufseherin (female guard) at the new Neugraben forced labour camp (a subcamp of the Neuengamme Concentration Camp) in the Hamburg suburb Neugraben. With the impending victory by the allies, camps were being closed so she was transferred with the prisoners to the new forced labour camp in Hamburg-Tiefstack in February / March 1945. In April, 1945, Anneliese assisted in transporting a group of women inmates from slave-labour camp, Hamburg-Tiefstack to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. She was arrested on the grounds of Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp, soon after the liberation, when her former victims from Neugraben and Tiefstack identified her wearing prisoner clothes. She was kept in Celle prison until her trial.

Anneliese Kohlmann was tried for war crimes at the Belsen Trial in Lüneburg in 1946 and found guilty of repeatedly whipping inmates including pregnant women across the face, kicking them until they lost consciousness, condemning at least one female prisoner to punishment of 30 lashes (for a piece of stolen bread), and sexually exploiting younger women. Preposterously, Anneliese Kohlmann was sentenced to only two years in prison, which was appallingly cut in half due her time spent in jail before trial - she was released the very day her trial ended! Anneliese Kohlmann's Belsen trial transcript can ve viewed at the UK National Archives.

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