Marcel Orford-Williams 🔶

Eileen Nearne MBE (a long-form post) Her SOE codename was “Rose,” and she ran covert radio operations in occupied France during WW2. Captured, she was sent to Ravensbrück, where she refused prison labour. Her head was shaved and she was threatened with execution. Transferred to a Silesian forced-labour camp, she endured torture. On 13 April 1945, she escaped with two French women, hiding in a forest until liberation. Eileen survived the war and lived quietly thereafter. Post-war she was awarded the Croix de Guerre by the French government, and the MBE from King George VI. In 1993, she returned to Ravensbrück with fellow agents to unveil a plaque honouring the four SOE women executed there in 1945. She died alone from a heart attack in her seaside flat, where her body was discovered in September 2010. Her funeral was provided free of charge by the Torbay & District Funeral Service of Torquay. Her legacy is cemented in the history books forever. (end).

The Jewish survivor who sat daily with Hitler’s top Nazis in their Nuremberg prison cells, translated their darkest secrets for the psychiatrists. Those men murdered his parents, but he had no bitterness, just extraordinary humanity. This is Howard Triest’s untold story: (🧵)

Freddie Morgan was a Jewish refugee who became a Major in the Royal Army Medical Corps, risked his life on the Rock of Gibraltar, and built an NHS practice from scratch. He is one of WWII’s forgotten heroes. This is his wartime story: (🧵)

#OTD 7th May 1945: General Alfred Jodl, representing Nazi Germany, signed the unconditional surrender to the Allies.