Noor Inayat Khan

Noor-un-Nisa Inayat Khan, GC (1 January 1914 – 13 September 1944), also known as Nora Inayat-Khan and Nora Baker, was a British-Indian agent in France in the Second World War who served in the Special Operations Executive (SOE). The purpose of SOE was to conduct espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance in countries occupied by the Axis powers, especially those occupied by Nazi Germany.

As an SOE agent under the codename Madeleine she became the first female wireless operator to be sent from the UK into occupied France to aid the French Resistance during the Second World War. She was the eldest of four children. Her siblings were Vilayat Inayat Khan, an author and Sufi teacher; Hidayat Inayat Khan, a composer and Sufi teacher; and Khair-un-Nisa Inayat Khan.

Her father, Inayat Khan, was born in Baroda, Bombay Presidency, and came from a family of Indian Muslims Afterwards, Vilayat became head of the Sufi Order of the West, later the Sufi Order International, and now the Inayati Order.

In 1914, shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, the family left Russia for Britain, and lived in the Bloomsbury neighborhood of London. Noor attended nursery in Notting Hill. In 1920, the family moved to France, settling in Suresnes near Paris, in a house that was a gift from a benefactor of the Sufi movement. As a young girl, Noor was described as quiet, shy, sensitive, and dreamy. After the death of her father in 1927, 13-year-old Noor took on the responsibility for her younger siblings from her grief-stricken mother. She studied child psychology at the Sorbonne, and also music at the Paris Conservatory under Nadia Boulanger, composing for both harp and piano.

As a young woman, Noor began a career as a writer, publishing her poetry and children's stories in English and French and becoming a regular contributor to children's magazines and French radio. In 1939, her book Twenty Jataka Tales, inspired by the Jataka tales of Buddhist tradition, was published in London by George G. Harrap and Co.

During the Second World War, when France was conquered by Nazi Germany, the family fled to Bordeaux and then by sea to Britain, landing at Falmouth, Cornwall, on 22 June 1940. Initially they stayed in Southampton, at the parental home of the philosopher Basil Mitchell.

Women's Auxiliary Air Force

Although Noor was deeply influenced by pacifist ideals, she and her brother Vilayat decided they wanted to help defeat Nazi tyranny: "I wish some Indians would win high military distinction in this war. If one or two could do something in the Allied service which was very brave and which everybody admired it would help to make a bridge between the English people and the Indians."

In November 1940, Noor joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) and, as an Aircraftwoman 2nd Class, was sent to be trained as a wireless operator. Upon assignment to a bomber training school in June 1941, she applied for a commission in an effort to relieve herself of the boring work there.

Special Operations Executive

thumb|upright|[[Wanborough Manor ]]

Later, Noor Inayat Khan was recruited to join F (France) Section of the Special Operations Executive; and in early February 1943 she was posted to the Air Ministry, Directorate of Air Intelligence, seconded to First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY). She was sent to Wanborough Manor, near Guildford in Surrey, after which she was ordered to Aylesbury, in Buckinghamshire, for special training as a wireless operator in occupied territory.

She was the first woman to be sent over in such a capacity, as all the woman agents before her had been sent as couriers. Having had previous wireless telegraphy (W/T) training, Noor had an edge on those who were just beginning their radio training, and was considered both fast and accurate.

From Aylesbury, Noor went on to Beaulieu, where the security training was capped with a practice mission – in the case of wireless operators, to find a place in a strange city from which they could transmit back to their instructors without being detected by an agent unknown to them who would be shadowing them.

The ultimate training exercise was the mock Gestapo interrogation, intended to give agents a taste of what might be in store for them if they were captured, and some practice in maintaining their cover story. Noor's escaping officer found her interrogation "almost unbearable" and reported that "she seemed terrified … so overwhelmed she nearly lost her voice", and that afterwards, "she was trembling and quite blanched."

Her final report read: "Not overburdened with brains but has worked hard and shown keenness, apart from some dislike of the security side of the course. She has an unstable and temperamental personality and it is very doubtful whether she is really suited to work in the field." Next to this comment, Maurice Buckmaster, the head of F Section, had written in the margin "Nonsense" and that "We don't want them overburdened with brains."

Noor Inayat Khan was betrayed to the Germans, possibly by Renée Garry. Garry was the sister of Émile Henri Garry, the head agent of the 'Cinema' and 'Phono' circuits, and Inayat Khan's organiser in the Cinema network (later renamed Phono). Émile Henri Garry was later arrested and executed at Buchenwald in September 1944.

Renée Garry was allegedly paid 100,000 francs (some sources state 500 pounds). Her actions have been attributed at least partially to Garry's suspicion that she had lost the affections of SOE agent France Antelme to Noor. After the war, she was tried but escaped conviction by one vote.

However, other sources indicate that Noor chatted amiably with an out-of-uniform Alsatian interrogator, and provided personal details which enabled the SD to answer random checks in the form of questions about her childhood and family.

left|thumb|upright=0.7|Inayat Khan's inscription at the [[Air Forces Memorial at Runnymede, England, memorialising those without a known grave]]

Noor did not talk about her activities under interrogation but the SD found her notebooks. Contrary to security regulations, Noor had copied out all the messages she had sent as an SOE operative (this may have been due to her misunderstanding what a reference to filing meant in her orders, and also the truncated nature of her security course due to the need to insert her into France as soon as possible). Although Noor refused to reveal any secret codes, the Germans gained enough information from them to continue sending false messages imitating her.

Some claim London failed to properly investigate anomalies which would have indicated the transmissions were sent under enemy control, in particular the change in the 'fist' (the style of the operator's Morse transmission). As a WAAF signaller, Noor had been nicknamed "Bang Away Lulu" because of her distinctively heavy-handed style, which was said to be a result of chilblains. However, according to M.R.D. Foot, the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) were quite adept at faking operators' fists. The well-organised and skillful counter-espionage work of the SD under Hans Josef Kieffer is, in fact, the true reason for the intelligence failures.

Additionally, Déricourt, F Section's air-landing officer in France, literally gave SOE's secrets to the SD in Paris. He would later claim to have been working for the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, commonly known as MI6), without the knowledge of SOE, as part of a complex deception plan in the run-up to D-Day.

As a result, however, three more agents sent to France were captured by the Germans at their parachute landing, including Madeleine Damerment, who was later executed. Sonya Olschanezky ('Tania'), a locally recruited SOE agent, had learnt of Noor's arrest and sent a message to London through her fiancé, Jacques Weil, telling Baker Street of her capture and warning HQ to suspect any transmissions from "Madeleine".

Colonel Maurice Buckmaster ignored the message as unreliable because he did not know who Olschanezky was. As a result, German transmissions from Noor's radio continued to be treated as genuine, leading to the unnecessary deaths of SOE agents, including Olschanezky herself, who was executed at Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp on 6 July 1944. When Vera Atkins investigated the deaths of missing SOE agents, she initially confused Noor with Olschanezky (they were similar in appearance), who was unknown to her, believing Noor had been killed at Natzweiler, correcting the record only when she learned of Noor's fate at Dachau.

On 25 November 1943, Noor escaped from the SD Headquarters, along with fellow SOE agent John Renshaw Starr and resistance leader Léon Faye, but was recaptured in the vicinity. There was an air raid alert as they escaped across the roof. Regulations required a count of prisoners at such times and their escape was discovered before they could get away. After refusing to sign a declaration renouncing future escape attempts, Noor was taken to Germany on 27 November 1943 "for safe custody" and imprisoned at Pforzheim in solitary confinement as a "Nacht und Nebel" ("Night and Fog": condemned to "Disappearance without Trace") prisoner, in complete secrecy. For ten months, she was kept there, shackled at her hands and feet.

thumb|right|Noor Inayat Khan's memorial plaque at the Dachau Memorial Hall

Noor was classified as "highly dangerous" and shackled in chains most of the time. As the prison director testified after the war, Noor remained uncooperative and continued to refuse to give any information on her work or her fellow operatives, although in her despair at the appalling nature of her confinement, other prisoners could hear her crying at night. However, by scratching messages on the base of her mess cup, Noor was able to inform another inmate of her identity, giving the name of Nora Baker and the London address of her mother's house.

Execution

On 12 September 1944, Noor Inayat Khan was abruptly transferred to the Dachau concentration camp along with her fellow agents Yolande Beekman, Madeleine Damerment and Eliane Plewman. At dawn on the following morning the four women were executed.

A Gestapo man named Max Wassmer was in charge of prisoner transports at Karlsruhe and accompanied the women to Dachau. Another Gestapo man named Christian Ott gave a statement to US investigators after the war as to the fate of Noor and her three companions. Ott was stationed at Karlsruhe and volunteered to accompany the four women to Dachau because he wanted to visit his family in Stuttgart on the return journey. Although he was not present at the execution, Ott told investigators what Wassmer had told him.

<blockquote>The four prisoners had come from the barrack in the camp, where they had spent the night, into the yard where the shooting was to take place. Here he [Wassmer] announced the death sentence to them. Only the Lagerkommandant and the two SS men were present. The German-speaking Englishwoman (the major) notified her companion about the death sentence. All four of the prisoners had grown very pale and wept; the major asked if they could protest against the sentence. The Kommandant declared that nobody could protest against the sentence. The major then requested to see a priest. The camp Kommandant denied the major's request on the ground that there was no priest in the camp. Now the four prisoners were ordered to kneel with their heads facing a small mound of earth before they were killed by the two SS men, one after another by a shot through the back of the neck. During the shooting, the two Englishwomen held hands and the two Frenchwomen did the same. For three of the prisoners, the first shot caused their deaths, but for the German-speaking Englishwoman, a second shot needed to be fired because she still showed signs of life after the first shot was fired. After the shooting of these prisoners the Lagerkommandant said to the two SS men that he took a personal interest in the jewellery of the women and that this should be taken into his office.</blockquote>

This is an unreliable account because Ott told the investigator that he had asked Wassmer the following question after he was told what had happened to the women: "But tell me, what really happened", to which Wassmer replied: "So you want to know how it really happened?"

In 1958, an anonymous Dutch prisoner asserted that Noor was cruelly beaten by an SS officer named Wilhelm Ruppert before she was shot from behind. Her last word was reported as "Liberté". Noor was survived by her mother and three siblings.

Honours and awards

thumb|upright|60px|[[Croix de Guerre avec étoiles vermeil]]

thumb|upright=0.7|right|Memorial bust of Inayat Khan in [[Gordon Square|Gordon Square Gardens, Bloomsbury, London ]]

Noor Inayat Khan was posthumously awarded the George Cross in 1949. She was also awarded the French Croix de Guerre avec étoile de vermeil ("with a silver-gilt star"). but her commission as Assistant Section Officer was gazetted in June (with effect from 5 July 1944), and she was Mentioned in Despatches in October 1946. Noor was the third of three Second World War FANY members to be awarded the George Cross, Britain's highest award for civilian gallantry. The unveiling of the bronze bust by the Princess Royal took place on 8 November 2012 in Gordon Square Gardens, Bloomsbury, London.

Noor was commemorated on a stamp which was issued by the Royal Mail on 25 March 2014 in a set of stamps about "Remarkable Lives". In 2018, a campaign was launched to have Noor represented on the next version of the £50 note.

George Cross citation

thumb|right|60px|[[George Cross and ribbon bar.]]

The announcement of the award of the George Cross was made in the London Gazette of 5 April 1949. The full citation reads:<blockquote>The KING has been graciously pleased to approve the posthumous award of the GEORGE CROSS to:—

Assistant Section Officer Nora INAYAT-KHAN (9901), Women's Auxiliary Air Force. Assistant Section Officer Nora INAYAT-KHAN was the first woman operator to be infiltrated into enemy occupied France, and she was landed by Lysander aircraft on 16th June, 1943. During the weeks immediately following her arrival, the Gestapo made mass arrests in the Paris Resistance groups to which she had been detailed. However, she refused to abandon what had become the principal and most dangerous post in France, even though she had been given the opportunity to return to England, because she did not want to leave her French comrades without communications and she also hoped to rebuild her group. Therefore, she remained at her post and did the excellent work which earned her a posthumous Mention in Despatches. The Gestapo had a full description of her, but it only knew her code name "Madeleine". It deployed considerable forces in its effort to catch her and break the last remaining link with London. After 3 months, she was betrayed to the Gestapo and taken to its H.Q. in the Avenue Foch. The Gestapo had found her codes and messages and as a result, it was now in a position to work back to London. It asked her to co-operate, but she refused and gave it no information of any kind. She was imprisoned in one of the cells on the 5th floor of the Gestapo H.Q. and she remained there for several weeks during which time she made two unsuccessful attempts to escape. She was asked to sign a declaration which stated that she would make no further escape attempts, but she refused to sign it and the Chief of the Gestapo obtained permission to send her to Germany for "safe custody" from Berlin. She was the first enemy agent to be sent to Germany. Assistant Section Officer INAYAT-KHAN was sent to Karlsruhe in November 1943, and then she was sent to Pforzheim where her cell was apart from the main prison. She was considered a particularly dangerous and uncooperative prisoner. The Director of the prison was also interrogated and confirmed that Assistant Section Officer INAYAT-KHAN refused to give any information whatsoever, either about her work or her colleagues when she was interrogated by the Karlsruhe Gestapo. She was taken to the Dachau Concentration Camp with three other female prisoners on 12 September 1944. On her arrival, she was taken to the crematorium and shot. Assistant Section Officer INAYAT-KHAN displayed the most conspicuous courage, both moral and physical over a period of more than 12 months.</blockquote>

{| style="margin:1em auto; text-align:center;"

|colspan=5|

|100px

{| class="wikitable" style="margin:1em auto; text-align:center;"

|colspan=5|George Cross

|1939–1945 Star

|France and Germany Star

|War Medal with Mention in Dispatches

|Croix de Guerre (avec étoile de vermeil)

Blue plaque

thumb|right|80px|Blue Plaque, August 2020

On 25 February 2019, it was announced Noor Inayat Khan would be honoured with a blue plaque at her wartime London home at 4 Taviton Street in Bloomsbury – the house she left on her final and fatal mission and the address she had etched into her bowl while in prison so she could be identified. Noor was the first woman of South Asian descent to have a blue plaque honouring her in London. The plaque was unveiled in a virtual ceremony broadcast on English Heritage's Facebook page at 7 pm on Friday 28 August 2020. In 2023, it toured nationally. NBC5, and the Chicago Reader.

In 2018 a play based on the life and death of Khan, entitled Agent Madeleine, premiered at the Ottawa Fringe Festival, Khan was played by Puja Uppal.

Khan is the basis for Catalyst Theatre's all-female musical The Invisible: Agents of Ungentlemanly Warfare. Book, music and lyrics by Jonathan Christenson.

Vera Atkins' search for the truth about Khan's death is the subject of the 2022 play S.O.E. by Deborah Clair.

Film

Noor's story is featured in the 2019 film A Call to Spy, written by Sarah Megan Thomas and directed by Lydia Dean Pilcher. Noor is played by Indian actress Radhika Apte.

Noor is the central character in the 2021 live action short film Liberté in which she is played by British actress Sam Naz. The film was shot on location at Beaulieu Palace House where Noor had trained for SOE and features music which was composed in Noor's memory by her brother Hidayat Inayat Khan.

Television

The third episode of the Indian anthology series Adrishya, which aired on Epic TV in 2014, was based on Noor Inayat Khan's wartime career, up to her death in Nazi Germany.
A Man Called Intrepid (first airdate February 1979), a six-hour, fact-based TV miniseries broadcast in Canada on CTV and in the US on NBC, starred David Niven as its protagonist Sir William Stephenson, and Barbara Hershey as Noor. It contains a number of deviations from the facts.
In 2014, PBS aired a 60-minute biographical docudrama entitled Enemy of the Reich: The Noor Inayat Khan Story, executive produced by Alex Kronemer and Michael Wolfe of Unity Productions Foundation and directed by Robert H. Gardner. Grace Srinivasan played the title role.
In 2018, Netflix released an original series entitled Churchill's Secret Agents: the new recruits. Season 1, episode 4 featured a summary of Noor's final mission with the SOE.
On 5 January 2020, Aurora Marion played Noor in "Spyfall, Part 2", the second episode of Doctor Who, series 12.

Radio

In November 1980, as an afternoon theatre production, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a play about Noor written by Patrice Chaplin.

In November 1980, The Knightsbridge Memorial, a play about Noor, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 as a Saturday-Night Theatre production.

In March 2025, Noor was the subject of an episode of the third series of History’s Secret Heroes on BBC Radio 4, narrated by Helena Bonham Carter

Podcasts

In 2024, Wondery produced a 5-part dramatised series on Noor's life as part of 'The Spy Who...' podcast.

Notes

References

Sources

Comprehensive look at the SOE in France during WW2.
Comprehensive look at Dericourt.
Jean Overton Fuller, Born For Sacrifice (Pan Books, 1957)
Documents Atkins' post-war search for missing SOE agents including Borrel.
Focus on the four female SOE agents (Borrel, Leigh, Olschanezky and Rowden) executed in the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp.

External links

Aquila Style – Muslim 'Spy Princess' Honoured in London
BBC History – Noor Inayat Khan (1914–1944)
BBC World Service – The Documentary, Codename: Madeleine
Independent – Noor Anayat Khan: The princess who became a spy
Nigel Perrin – 10 Amazing Female Spies Who Brought Down The Nazis