On September 13, 1944, an Indian princess lay dead in the Dachau concentration camp. She had been tortured by the Nazis and then shot in the head. Her name was Noor Inayat Khan.
The Germans knew her only as Nora Baker, a British spy who had entered occupied France using the codename Madeline. She carried her transmitter from safe house to safe house with the Gestapo on her tail, providing communications for her Resistance unit.
- Wireless carriers in France had a life expectancy of six weeks. Noor was actively transmitting for more than three times that long.
- While she was in France, all other wireless operators in her network were slowly intercepted until she was the last radio link between London and Paris. It was “the most dangerous and important post in France.”
- She was offered a way back to Britain and refused .
- In fact, in her broadcasts to London, she once said that she was having the time of her life and thanked him for giving her the opportunity to do so.
- She was captured by the Gestapo, but never gave up; she made three escape attempts. One involved asking to take a shower, insisting on being allowed to close the door to preserve her modesty, and then climbing onto the roof of the Gestapo HQ in Paris.
- Her last words before being shot were: “Liberté!”
Her entire life and her mother’s life are also FASCINATING. A real, Muslim, Anglo-Indian woman in WWII.