The British Mother of 3 Who Hanged the SS Officers Who Tortured Her and Tore Her Nails Out

#OdetteSansom #SOE #WW2History In 1943, a French-born mother of three from Kensington sat chained on a train between Marseilles and Paris, looked at the British officer beside her, and invented a lie that would keep them both alive for two years. She told the SS she was married to the nephew of Winston Churchill. She was not. She defended that lie while the Gestapo tore her toenails out one by one, pressed a hot iron on her back, and read her a death sentence — on two counts. This documentary reveals the untold story of Odette Sansom, code-named Lise, the SOE F Section courier who was captured with her circuit chief Peter Churchill in April 1943 and taken to 84 Avenue Foch, the headquarters of the SS Sicherheitsdienst in Paris. She was interrogated fourteen times. She never gave up a single address. She never named a single agent. She never broke. Discover how a housewife from South London, trained by Special Operations Executive in Morse code, coding, and silent killing, endured Fresnes prison, the SD's torture chambers on Avenue Foch, and the Bunker punishment block at Ravensbrück concentration camp — and walked out at the end of the war carrying the commandant's own pistol as a souvenir. 🔥 In this video: The Grandfather's Grave in Amiens: Why a French girl who grew up under the shadow of a father killed at Verdun answered the wireless call for photographs of the coast. The Bunker at Ravensbrück: How Odette Sansom survived months of solitary confinement in total darkness by repeating the names of her three daughters — Françoise, Lily, Marianne. Avenue Foch: The fourteen SS interrogators who could not break her, and the two words she gave to every one of them. The Sühren Ruse: How the commandant of Ravensbrück, Fritz Sühren, tried to use Odette as a bargaining chip with the advancing Americans in April 1945. The George Cross: The first woman ever awarded the George Cross by King George VI, and the trial of the Ravensbrück staff at Hamburg. Sources of Where I get my facts: Tickell, J. (1949) *Odette: The Story of a British Agent*. Chapman & Hall, London. Fitzsimons, P. (2018) *Nancy Wake: The Inspiring Story of One of the War's Greatest Heroines*. HarperCollins, Sydney. Foot, M. R. D. (2004) *SOE in France: An Account of the Work of the British Special Operations Executive in France, 1940–1944*. Whitehall History Publishing, London. Helm, S. (2015) *If This Is a Woman: Inside Ravensbrück, Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women*. Little, Brown, London. The National Archives (UK), HS 9/648/4 — Personal File of Odette Marie Céline Sansom; and WO 235 series — Ravensbrück Trial Records, Hamburg 1946–47. Disclaimer: This video is a historical documentary intended for educational purposes. #OdetteSansom #SOE #WW2History #FSection #GeorgeCross #Ravensbrück #AvenueFoch #FritzSühren #PeterChurchill #WomenAtWar