World War II Database

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

ww2dbaseDenise Madeleine Bloch was a French Jew. In 1942, her family was imprisoned by the Gestapo, but Bloch escaped with her fiancée M. Mendelsohn. The couple was eventually recruited by the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) in Jul of the same year in Lyons, France. She worked with SOE wireless operator Brian Stonehouse until his arrest in late Oct 1942. She fled to Marseilles, France, and was nearly captured when she traveled to Lyons to meet with other operatives. Between 3 Nov 1942 and 2 Jan 1943, she remained in hiding at St Laurent de Chamousset and Villerfranche sur Mer. In early 1943, she worked with SOE operatives George Reginald Starr and Philippe de Vomécourt in Agen, Lot-et-Garonne in Southern France. On 29 Apr 1943, she departed for a trip across the Pyrenees Mountains and Spain for Gibraltar; upon reaching Gibraltar, SOE sent her to London, England, United Kingdom for further training, arriving on 21 May 1943. On 2 Mar 1944, she was parachuted back into France, in the Nantes area, along with operative Robert Benoist. Benoist was arrested on 18 Jun 1944, and Bloch the next day. She was successively imprisoned in Ravensbrück concentration camp, Torgau, and Konisberg in Germany, and was starved and tortured as Germans interrogated her. Some time between 25 Jan and 5 Feb 1945, she was executed at Ravensbrück concentration camp.

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4.  C. Peter Chen says:
3 Jan 2022 08:13:00 AM

Thank you very much for your note, anonymous of 1 Jan 2022. Her exact date of execution is unknown. We know that it happened between 25 Jan 1945 and 5 Feb 1945. WW2DB opted to list her date of death as 25 Jan 1945, while Wikipedia chose 5 Feb 1945.