10/06/2019
Strong and fearless!
As a World War II wireless operator charged with setting “Europe ablaze,” Noor Inayat Khan (1914-1944) was given a life expectancy of six weeks and a cyanide pill so she could commit su***de in the case of capture.
Noor was a gentle children's story writer, a Sufi Muslim, and a pacifist, but she believed it would be a crime to not stand up to the N***s. She learned to use the wireless in Britain in 1940, though her male supervisors didn’t think much of her, dismissing her as a “vague, dreamy creature, far too conspicuous.” Nevertheless, because she spoke French, she was signed up to the elite Special Operations Executive spy squad. The 29-year-old parachuted down on Paris on 16 June, 1943 and got to work.
Within a few weeks of her arrival, the SS intelligence agency arrested Noor’s entire spy ring; she was the only wireless operator left in the capital. Her supervisors urged Noor to return to London, but she refused to stop broadcasting.
Noor was the most wanted person in Paris, and on October 13, 1943 — following nearly four months traveling from safehouse to safehouse in disguise — she was betrayed by a double agent and arrested.
Noor tried to escape from Gestapo headquarters by unscrewing the bars of her cell’s skylight and forming a rope made of sheets and blankets to the building next-door. She was caught, refused to sign a declaration saying she’d make no further escape attempts, and was given the “highly dangerous" classification. Sent to prison in Germany and kept in isolation for ten months, Noor suffered horrific beatings. Despite all that, she refused to give the S.S. a single piece of information.
On the 13th of September, 1944, she and three other female agents were transferred to Dachau concentration camp. They were shot and killed that morning. Noor’s final utterance was a simple “Liberté."
In taking on the Gestapo from the front line, Noor showed that she was nothing like the “too sensitive and easily hurt” girl her supervisors described. In fact, she was unwaveringly brave.
Since 2012, a bust of her — Britain’s first memorial to be dedicated to an Asian woman — has stood in London’s Gordon Square Gardens.
Did you know Noor's story?
You can learn more about her life in the beautiful illustrated book The Woman Who Rode a Shark: And 50 More Wild Female Adventurers: https://linktr.ee/womenadventurers
