Andrée Borrel

Andrée Raymonde Borrel (18 November 1919 – 6 July 1944) was a French heroine of World War II.

Early life

Andrée Borrel was born into a working-class family in Louveciennes, Yvelines in the suburbs of Paris, growing up an active girl who liked hiking and most other outdoor activities. At the age of fourteen she left school to work in a bakery shop.

War Work & Special Operations Executive

When World War II broke out, the then nineteen-year-old girl went to the Mediterranean port city of Toulon where she trained as a nurse's aid with the "Association des Dames de France" (ADF). Following her training, she worked in Beaucaire treating wounded soldiers. After France fell to the Germans in June 1940, the ADF came under the control of Marshal Pétain, and Borrel, who was not willing to accept her country's defeat, joined the French Resistance helping British airmen shot down over France to escape through the "underground railway" back to Britain. With Maurice Dufour, she established a villa in Perpignan near the Spanish border and co-operated with the escape network of Albert Guérisse.

In December 1941 Borrel's resistance group was uncovered and she fled to Lisbon, Portugal. There, she worked at the Free French Propaganda Office for a short time until April 1942 when she travelled to London. From General de Gaulle's Free French bureau she learned about the French Section of the Special Operations Executive and immediately signed up.

On the night of 24 September 1942, Borrel and fellow SOE agent, Lise de Baissac (Odile) became the first female agents to be parachuted into occupied France. They were flown in from RAF Tempsford. Borrel dropped first. In the darkness, Baissac dropped near Poitiers while Borrel dropped into a field near the village of Mer, not far from the Loire River and was picked up by members of a local resistance team.

Because of her intimate knowledge of Paris, Borrel was sent there to work as a courier for the new "Prosper" network run by Francis Suttill. She made contact in Paris with Germaine and Madeleine Tambour. Suttill was impressed with Borrel's performance and in the spring of 1943 she was made second in command of the Paris network. Whilst working in the Prosper network she took part in sabotage, especially raiding a power station, and supervising weapons drops.

Probably because of a traitor, in June 1943 several members of the Prosper network were arrested by the Gestapo on 23 June 1943, including network leader Francis Suttill and Andrée Borrel. She was interrogated in the Gestapo's Paris headquarters and then held in Fresnes prison. She remained there until May 1944 when, together with three other captured female SOE agents, Vera Leigh, Sonya Olschanezky and Diana Rowden, Borrel was shipped to the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in the Vosges Mountains of Alsace.

On 6 July 1944, 24-year-old Andrée Borrel and her three compatriots were given lethal injections of phenol, then incinerated in the camp's crematorium. Evidence collected immediately after the war by Squadron Officer Vera Atkins and Major Bill Barkworth of the SAS War Crimes investigation team (included in the Justice - SAS Style program in the television series Nazi Hunters ), indicates that Borrel regained consciousness before being placed in the cremation oven and fought to save her life, facially scarring the camp executioner who was placing her in the oven. However, she was unable to escape and was put into the flames whilst still alive. Both the doctor who administered the injection and the camp executioner were later executed by the Allies for war crimes.

Awards and honours

Posthumously, the government of France awarded her the Croix de Guerre in recognition of her heroic sacrifice for her country's freedom. The concentration camp where she died is a now a French government historical site. A plaque to Andrée Borrel and the three women who died with her is part of the Deportation Memorial on the site. As one of the SOE agents who died for the liberation of her country, Lieutenant Borrel is listed on the "Roll of Honor" on the Valençay SOE Memorial in the town of Valençay, in the Indre département of France.

In 1985, SOE agent and painter Brian Stonehouse, who saw Andrée Borrel 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, England.

External links

• Information on and photographs of Andrée Borrel on the Special Forces Roll of Honour
• The Fany Agents: Andrée Borrel
• Andrée Borrel short biography