Bloch, Denise Madeleine, 1916-1945

Denise Madeleine Bloch was a French citizen who worked as an agent with the clandestine British Special Operations Executive (SOE) organization in the Second World War. Bloch and her family, Jews, evaded capture by the Germans in Paris after its occupation by Nazi Germany in summer 1940. In 1942 the family escaped to Lyon. Bloch became involved in the French Resistance and narrowly avoided arrest in Lyon. Fleeing to southwestern France, she worked for SOE agent George Reginald Starr as his courier. In May 1942, she made a dangerous crossing of the Pyrenees into Spain and hence to SOE headquarters in London to present Starr's request for more aid to his resistance forces. Although known to the Germans and with a price on her head, Bloch was trained as a radio operator by SOE and sent back to France in 1944 to help carry out sabotage missions against the Germans. She was captured and sent to prison camps in Germany and executed in late January or early February 1945 at Ravensbrück concentration camp.