Today in History – Lilian Rolfe WWII Secret Agent Birthday

In 1914, Lilian and her twin sister were born in Paris and in 1930 she moved with her British family to Brazil. She worked for the British Embassy in Rio de Janeiro at the onset of WWII eventually monitoring German shipping movements in the harbor. In 1943 she returned to England to join the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force and became a wireless operator. Fluent in French, she came to the attention of (SOE) Special Operations Executive and agreed to work for them as a British special agent. Using the code name “Nadine”, she joined the Historian network in France in 1944 and transmitted over 60 messages to London about German troop movements, arms and supply drops. Four short months later she was arrested, repeatedly interrogated and brutally tortured by the Gestapo. Eventually she was deported to Nazi Germany and in February 1945 was executed at Ravensbruck, a women’s concentration camp. After the war, she received the Croix de Guerre and other posthumous awards for her valiant efforts