Tag: Plötzensee Prison

Posted on

“Racer, Spy and the Erotic Model”

Our story today originated as a result of an e-mail from one of our readers, Andrew B. who read our blog Double Agent or Bad Neighbor? (read here). Andrew pointed out that I had “missed a key point, 140 meters away from (where) Déricourt, lived Yvonne Grover-Williams.” Andrew went on to briefly describe Yvonne’s role during the German occupation of Paris.

Andrew was right about me missing this one on Yvonne and her story. To be honest, I had never run across this woman or her husband, William Charles Frederick Grover-Williams, head of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) CHESTNUT circuit in Paris. During the occupation, Yvonne lived at 21, rue Weber which was around the corner from Henri Déricourt’s apartment about five hundred feet away at 58, rue Pergolèse (and next door to the renown Nazi spy catcher, Hugo Bleicher) and not too far from Avenue Foch where various Gestapo units set up their offices including the infamous interrogation and torture cells on the fifth and sixth floors at number 84.

Exterior of Henri Déricourt’s apartment building: 58, rue Pergolèse. Photo by Sandy Ross (2017).
Exterior of Henri Déricourt’s apartment building: 58, rue Pergolèse. Photo by Sandy Ross (2017).

Well, that sent me down, yet another rabbit hole and I discovered a wonderful book by Joe Saward called The Grand Prix Saboteurs. Part of the story includes the years Yvonne spent as Sir William Orpen’s mistress, modeling for his paintings in some very suggestive nude poses. Then, with Orpen’s approval, she married the couple’s chauffeur.

Did You Know?

Did you know that a gruesome discovery was made several years ago in Berlin at the Charité University Hospital? In several of my past blogs, I’ve talked about the Nazi executions (i.e., beheadings) of women prisoners − principally political resisters − at Plötzensee Prison (read The Nazi Guillotine blog here). After their executions, the bodies were sent over to the Berlin Institute of Anatomy at Charité where Dr. Hermann Stieve (1886-1952) was an internationally acclaimed anatomist. His research specialized in the effects of stress on the menstrual cycle. Before the Nazis came to power in 1933, women were not executed in Germany. However, that changed quickly under the Nazi party. Approximately 182 women were tried before a Nazi court (read Hitler’s Blood Judge blog here), found guilty, and executed. Stieve performed dissections on their reproductive organs to support his research. After he was finished, the remains were discretely cremated and disposed of in locations that were never disclosed to the families. Some of these victims included the women of the Red Orchestra resistance organization (read Die Rote Kapelle blog here) while others were convicted of innocuous crimes including distributing leaflets.

Professor Hermann Stieve lecturing an anatomy class. Photo by anonymous (c. 1943). Private collection – DocHu. PD-Author Release. Wikimedia Commons.
Professor Hermann Stieve lecturing an anatomy class. Photo by anonymous (c. 1943). Private collection – DocHu. PD-Author Release. Wikimedia Commons.

In 2016, more than three hundred microscope slides once belonging to Stieve were discovered at Charité. These were samples taken from the bodies he dissected during the war. They were stored in small black boxes with the names of the victims. On 13 May 2019, a small coffin containing the slides was buried at Berlin’s Dorotheenstadt Cemetery in a grave near one of the memorials to the victims of the Nazis. It is hoped that this will give some closure to the victims’ families as well as an effort to ensure the Nazis’ crimes will not be forgotten. Despite joining right-wing organizations during the interwar period (the time between World Wars I and II) and becoming a strong supporter of Hitler, Dr. Stieve never joined the Nazi party. As a result, he was never tried for war crimes.

Procession to bury small coffin containing slides of human tissue from women prisoners executed by the Nazis. Photo by anonymous (c. 2019). Reuters – BBC.
Procession to bury small coffin containing slides of human tissue from women prisoners executed by the Nazis. Photo by anonymous (c. 2019). Reuters – BBC.

Let’s Meet Yvonne Aupicq

Yvonne Aupicq (1896-1973) was born in Lille, France to Joseph Aupicq, a schoolteacher and Laetitia who worked as a housekeeper. Many accounts of Yvonne’s life mention her father was mayor of Lille and her last name was spelled Aubicq. However, her birth certificate and other historical records do not substantiate either of those assertions.

Yvonne was a strikingly beautiful woman with deep blue eyes and golden curly hair. She worked at a hospital during World War I which is where she met the famous Irish portrait artist, Major William Orpen (1878-1931), who was assigned to the war’s Western Front as an official Allied war artist. Learn more about Major William Orpen here. Read More “Racer, Spy and the Erotic Model”

Posted on

The Nazi Guillotine

We normally associate the guillotine with the French Revolution and the period known as “The Terror.”  There are different estimates of the total number of victims claimed by “The National Razor” during the French Revolution with anywhere from four thousand up to ten-fold or, forty thousand lives lost to Dr. Joseph Guillotin’s machine. Well, it is likely that Hitler and the Nazis executed more than sixteen thousand using twenty fallbeil or, guillotines scattered around Germany in various prisons. The victims were primarily German citizens—young and old—men, women, and children—some whose only crimes were distributing anti-Nazi leaflets.

Johann Reichhart in his executioner clothing. Photo by anonymous (date unknown).
Johann Reichhart in his executioner clothing. Photo by anonymous (date unknown).

Did You Know?

“What if?”  What if Abraham Lincoln was never assassinated? Would Jim Crow laws ever have existed? What if Martin Luther King, Jr. had not been assassinated? Would he have been our first African-American president? What if Lenin hadn’t died in 1924 and was able to prevent Stalin from taking over? Could the Cold War (and the Great Purge with its murder of 1.2 million Russian citizens) have been prevented? “What if?” scenarios can be applied to just about any historical situation. In this case, it’s about the Nazis coming to power. The German Communist Party (KDP) was a legitimate political party often collaborating with the German socialist party known as the Social Democratic Party (SDP). The KDP was independent from Moscow’s influence but when Stalin was able to control the Communist International (an organization which enveloped the world’s Communist parties), he ordered all local Communist parties to be subordinate to the Communist International and Moscow. Once that was accomplished, Stalin ordered all Communist parties to regard socialist parties as their enemy and to end any collaboration. By 1928, the KDP and the SDP accounted for more than forty percent of the German parliamentary vote. They often formed a working coalition. The National Socialist German Workers Party or, commonly known as the Nazi Party, controlled less than three percent in the late 1920s. After Stalin’s directive, the two parties (KDP and SDP) could not vote together and one of the results was the increase in representation of the Nazi party culminating five years later with Hitler coming to power. So, what if  Stalin had not issued his resolution stating that socialism was “more dangerous than the avowed adherents of predatory imperialism.” Would the KDP and SDP working together have been able to thwart Hitler’s plans and prevent the twelve years of the thousand year Third Reich?

Hitler Comes To Power

The stage was set. After losing World War I and forced to make what even some of the victors considered to be unreasonable reparation payments, Germany suffered through hyperinflation. The Weimar Republic was weak and by the time the consequences of the American stock market crash in October 1929 reached Germany, millions were out of work and banks collapsed. Taking advantage of the lack of cohesive leadership and the general suffering of the voters, the National Socialist German Worker’s Party or, the Nazi Party began to espouse a far right-wing nationalistic position. The Nazis’ platform included a national and cultural renewal. Hitler promised a strong central government, a better economy with jobs, increased Lebensraum (“living space”), a rejection of the terms of the Versailles Treaty, and the collapse of the unpopular Weimar Republic. They also made no attempt to hide their plans for the treatment of Jews and people of “inferior” races (i.e., anyone other than those of the Germanic or Aryan race). In other words, the Nazis were about to serve up a policy of racial cleansing. Read More The Nazi Guillotine