Denise Bloch (1916-1945)

DOSSIER:
Denise Madeleine Bloch, daughter of Jacques Henri Bloch and Susznne Levi-Strause, was born in Barrault, Paris, France on 21 Jan 1916. She was executed on 5 Feb 1945 at the Ravensbruck concentration camp.

As the Bloch family was Jewish, they were rounded up when France was occupied by the Germans in 1942. 

CODE NAME:
Ambroise

Before the war, Denise was employed at the Citroen automobile manufacturing company. She was secretary to Lieutenant Jean Maxime Aron, who was also a Jewish Resistance leader in France. 

Denise was recruited in Lyon to work for the SOE. She began with radio operator Brian Stonehouse until his arrest near the end of October that year. Following his capture, Denise went into hiding until early 1943 when she was put in touch with SOE agents George Reginald Starr and Philippe de Vomécourt. She began working with them in the town of Agen in the Lot-et-Garonne département in the south of France. However, it was decided to send her to London and. accompanied by another agent, she walked across the Pyrenees mountains making her way to Gibraltar and eventually London. There, SOE trained her as a wireless operator in preparation for a return to France.

On 2 Mar 1944, with fellow SOE agent, Robert Benoist, she was dropped back into central France. Working in the Nantes area, the pair re-established contact with SOE agent and Benoist's fellow race car driver, Jean-Pierre Wimille. However, in June, both she and Benoist were arrested. Denise was interrogated and tortured before being shipped to Germany. She was held in prisons at Torgau in Saxony and at Königsberg in Brandenburg, where she suffered great hardship from exposure, cold and malnutrition.

Eventually shipped to Ravensbrück concentration camp, sometime between 25 Jan - 5 Feb 1945, 29-year-old Denise Madeleine Bloch was executed by the Germans and her body disposed-of in the crematorium. Lilian Rolfe and Violette Szabo, two other female members of the SOE held at Ravensbrück, were executed at about the same time. In May, just days before the German surrender, SOE agent Cecily Lefort was also executed. It is alleged that SS-Sturmbannführer Horst Kopkow was involved in the arrest/killing of these SOE agents.

Denise Bloch's family grave site at the Montmartre Cemetery in Paris memorializes her life and execution.