Sonia Olschanezky

In spite of the efforts of Vera Atkins (F Section's intelligence officer during the war), Olschanezky is not commemorated on the Valençay SOE Memorial in the Loire Valley, unveiled in 1991, which is dedicated to the 91 men and 13 women of F Section who were killed in action. Atkins was told by the memorial committee that Olschanezky was not eligible to be noted on the memorial as she was a locally recruited agent, not commissioned in the British armed forces. Nor was this German-born Jew honoured by the British or French governments with any medals or citations, despite her heroic exploits on behalf of these two nations.

In 1985, SOE agent and painter Brian Stonehouse, who saw Olschanezky and the three other female SOE agents at the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp just before their deaths, painted a poignant watercolour of the four women which now hangs in the Special Forces Club in London.

Olschanezky remained free until her capture in January 1944 and, after being interrogated by the Gestapo, was imprisoned at Fresnes Prison. On 13 May 1944, Olschanezky together with three other captured SOE agents, Andrée Borrel, Vera Leigh and Diana Rowden, were moved from Fresnes to the Gestapo's Paris headquarters at 84 Avenue Foch along with Yolande Beekman, Madeleine Damerment, Eliane Plewman and Odette Sansom, all of whom were F Section agents. (Only Sansom would survive the war.) Later that day they were taken to the railway station, and each handcuffed to a guard on the train. Sansom, in an interview after the war, said:

Some time between five and six in the morning on 6 July 1944, not quite two months after their arrival in Karlsruhe, Borrel, Leigh, Olschanezky and Rowden were taken to the reception room, given their personal possessions, and handed over to two Gestapo men who then escorted them 100 kilometres south-west by closed truck to the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in France, where they arrived around three-thirty in the afternoon. The women's arrival was apparently unexpected as was the order by one of the women's escorts that the four women were to be executed immediately.

Olschanezky was locally recruited by Jacques Weil to a small Jewish Juggler (also known as Robin) sub-circuit of SOE's Physician (also known as Prosper) circuit operating near Paris. The agents of Prosper circuit included Andrée Borrel (courier), Francis Suttill (organizer) and Gilbert Norman (W/T operator). Circuits were also known as networks. Olschanezky was stationed in Châlons-sur-Marne and spent much of her time as a courier between Châlons and their headquarters in the rue Cambon, near the Place de la Concorde, using the codename "Tania" and "Suzanne Ouvrard". The long-awaited second-front in the form of a cross-channel invasion was expected in the 1943, and sabotage was stepped up through the spring.

Unknown to London, Olschanezky had refused to follow Weill who fled to Bern (Switzerland) in July 1943 after the arrest of the leader of Robin (Jean Alexandre Worms) following the collapse of Prosper the previous month, leaving her in charge of what was left of Robin and taking immense risks by running messages between different SOE groups that were likely compromised by this collapse.

In May 1942, orders were given for all Jewish men, women and children to wear a six-pointed yellow star on their clothing. The following month, Olschanezky was arrested and sent to the Drancy deportation camp, where she waited being sent to an extermination camp in Nazi Germany.

Her mother contacted friends in Germany who managed to produce false papers that stated that Olschanezky had "economically valuable skills" needed for the war effort. On the production of the papers and the payment of money to a German official, Olschanezky was freed in the autumn of 1942. After her release she told her mother, that she felt she had to "do something to defend us. Others won’t do it for us. We must do it for ourselves." When her mother asked if she didn't think she had already lost enough, she replied that if everyone said that, no one would do anything. Through one of the families for whom she had worked, she met Jacques Weil, who would later become Olschanezky's fiancé, and found an opportunity to become a résistant.

In May 1940, France was invaded by the German Army. After the French surrender, the new leader, Henri-Philippe Petain, cooperated in the persecution of the Jews in the country.

In Paris, Olschanezky became a dance student, and when the manager of a children's theatre saw her in class one day she was asked to join the theatre company. Her parents said no at first, but she eventually won them over, and the age of 10 she began performing with Le Théâtre du Petit Monde on Thursday afternoons, the school holiday. Through the influence of a distant relative she appeared on television in a demonstration of the new medium at the 1937 International Exposition in Paris. While still a schoolgirl, she was now working as a performer, appearing at school dances and private affairs, using the professional name of Sonia Olys.

In 1926 the family left Germany for Bucharest, where Eli Olschanezky had been invited to oversee the construction of, and then run, a factory producing silk stockings. After three years his partners stopped credit and the business failed, which resulted in the family villa and possessions being sold. The family moved to Paris in January 1930 and settled into a pension de famille in the Thirteenth Arrondissement. Eli Olschanezky tried to re-establish himself in business but found himself cheated of his money, which left him sick and demoralised, and the family moved to cheaper accommodation. Serge (formerly Tobias), then aged 15, left school and, along with his brother Enoch, got a job in a hotel.

Sonia Olschanezky (25 December 1923 – 6 July 1944) was a member of the French Resistance and the Special Operations Executive during World War II. Olschanezky was a member of the SOE's Juggler circuit in occupied France where she operated as a courier until she was arrested by the Gestapo and was subsequently executed at the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp.

In September 1916 Olschanezky's parents were married and set up house in Chemnitz where their three children were born. Enoch (25 September 1917 – 18 April 1944), Tobias (who later changed his name to Serge; March 1919) and Sonia (25 December 1923). The family lived a comfortable bourgeois life between the wars, with a chauffeur, a cook, and a governess for the children in their apartment on the Hellenenstrasse. As secular Jews, the Olschanezkys celebrated major Jewish holidays and contributed to Jewish charities including the Jewish National Fund.

One action in which Olschanezky took part succeeded in blowing up a munitions train at Melun, on the Seine south of Paris. To her mother and brothers she never denied the danger she was in. Her brother Serge said of her, "She was not one of those who reveled in it, she just accepted it." Serge escaped from a POW camp in Germany, with Enoch working for the Robin circuit. Enoch (25 September 1917 – 18 April 1944) was murdered at Auschwitz; no other details are known.

Olschanezky was born in Chemnitz, Germany. Her father, Eli Olschanezky, was born in Odessa and came to Germany to study chemical engineering. He met Olschanezky's mother, Helene, at a dance given by the Jewish community in Leipzig. They were engaged on 1 August 1914, the day Germany declared war on Russia. Russian citizens in Germany were then subject to internment. Helene's father, a portrait painter from Minsk used his society contacts to arrange for Eli's release from internment after six months on condition that he report every week to the police station in Chemnitz. As an enemy alien, he was unable to work as a chemical engineer and took a job as a sales representative for a manufacturer of ladies' stockings.