Madeleine Damerment (1917-1944)

DOSSIER:
Madeleine Zoe Damerment was born on 11 Nov 1917 in Lille, France. She was executed at the Dachau concentration camp on 13 Sept 1944.

CODE NAMES:
Agent Bricklayer
Solange

Following the occupation of France by the Germans in World War II, Madeleine's family became actively involved with the French Resistance. The unassuming twenty-two-year-old Madeleine worked as an assistant to Michael Trotobas on the escape line set up by Albert Guérisse. She helped downed British airmen and others to escape France until 1942, when it is believed that one of her fellow resistance workers, Harold Cole, betrayed the group and she had to flee to England.

Once in England, she volunteered to work with the Special Operations Executive (SOE). Trained to be a courier for the Bricklayer network, on the night of 28 Feb 1944, she and agents France Antelme and Lionel Lee were parachuted into a field near the city of Chartres in France. However, they had been betrayed and the waiting Gestapo arrested them on landing. 

Dachau Crematorium

Shipped to Gestapo headquarters on the Avenue Foch in Paris, Madeleine was subjected to examination and torture. On 12 May 1944 she was sent with several other captured SOE agents to the civilian prison for women at Karlsruhe in Germany. She was held there under horrific conditions until 11 September when she was abruptly transferred to Dachau concentration camp with fellow agents Eliane Plewman, Yolande Beekman and Noor Inayat Khan.

At dawn on 13 Sept 1944, the day after their arrival in Dachau, the four young women were taken to a small courtyard next to the crematorium and forced to kneel on the ground. They were then executed by a shot through the back of the head and their bodies cremated.