The two Violettes

The confusion between Violette Summer and Violette Szabo is understandable. They were alike in many ways. Both women lived in England, both had husbands who were killed in action in the early years of the war, and both were sent on undercover operations in France. But Szabo was French by birth, married a French soldier and had a daughter. Summer was born in Devon, her husband was an RAF pilot, and she had no children. Summer was also four years older (born 1917), her hair was not black but dark brown, and she was several inches taller than the diminuitive Szabo.

Violette Szabo was sent on two missions into occupied France and was captured in 1944 defending her comrades in the Resistance, was tortured horribly, was sent to the Ravensbruck concentration camp, and was finally executed with a bullet in the back of her skull on February 5th 1945. She was posthumously awarded the George Cross, the Croix de Guerre and the Medaille de la Resistance.

Violette Summer's last mission was in 1943. We don't know what happened to her. Nobody knows. She sent her final message to London, and disappeared.

Some people say she was captured and killed by the Germans, and her body hidden so that she wouldn't become another martyr-figure. Some say she was executed by the Resistance, or by a traitor in the Resistance. Some say she was sick of all the killing and hid herself away until the end of the war. Some say she changed identity as part of a mission and never went back to being 'Violette Summer' again. Some say she went over to the side of the Nazis, or that she'd been a German double-agent all along, but the evidence for that is flimsy. Some say she's still alive. Some people are optimists.

I said that nobody knows for sure. More truthfully, if anyone knows then they're not telling... and they have held their secret for 65 years.

I'll talk about Violette's final message soon.