Antonia Lyon-Smith (20 September 1925 in Toronto, Ontario - 9 October 2010 in Seaton, Devon, England) was an Englishwoman who at age 14 was accidentally left in Brittany in France by her parents, at the start of World War II, when the area was overrun by the German advance in June 1940. [1] [2] [3] She was interned along with her nanny in a camp in Besançon and was released with the help of the Red Cross, and moved to Neuilly. She was able to secure identity papers and moved to Paris where she made several attempts to escape to Spain and Switzerland. She made contact with the playwright Claude Spaak, a member of the French resistance, who was involved with a Soviet espionage group that would later be called the Red Orchestra ("Rote Kapelle"). Unwittingly asked to write a letter of introduction for the Spaaks, for a member of the group to meet a Belgian doctor, who was also working in the resistance, it was eventually discovered by the Gestapo and she was arrested by the Sonderkommando Rote Kapelle and interrogated for several months. She was released and after the war was flown back to Great Britain, where she met her mother. After the war, she was interviewed by MI5 in connection with her release from the Gestapo and Red Orchestra.
Lyon-Smith Née Smith, was the daughter of the Canadian housewife Phyllis Alleyne Lyon-Smith née Hellmuth and British Brigadier Tristram Lyon-Smith. [4] [5] On 16 May 1943, Brigadier Lyon-Smith, who fought in the North African campaign, was recommended for a Distinguished Service Order for outstanding courage in the field. It was awarded on 8 July 1943. [6] Lyon-Smith received a second honour in the form of a military CBE on 11 October 1945 for outstanding powers of leadership as Commander Royal Artillery of 7th Armoured Division (CRA 7th Armoured Desert Rats). [7] Her grandfather was Isaac Hellmuth. [8]
When she was six, Lyon-Smith travelled to Egypt with her parents, when her father was stationed there for two years at the British Army garrison in Heliopolis in Cairo. [9] Two years later, her parents were posted to India and the family felt that the place was unsuitable for a child, so Lyon-Smith stayed with her cousins Marcel and Diane Provost, in Menglas, Concarneau in Brittany. [10] The Provosts owned a fish canning business and also two houses, one in Paris and one in Concarneau. [11] Two years later, her parents were posted back to Great Britain and Lyon-Smith joined them at the military base at Catterick Garrison in North Yorkshire when she was thirteen. [10]
With the start of World War II, Lyon-Smith's father's regiment was sent to France as part of the British Expeditionary Force. [12] Lyon-Smith and her mother were forced to move out of the garrison. Lyon-Smith was sent to boarding school, while her mother stayed with friends. Later in the year, her mother gave Lyon-Smith the choice of spending the war in Brittany at her cousin's or go to stay at her grandmother's house on Lake Simcoe in Ontario for the duration of the war. Phyllis Lyon-Smith's reasoning was based on the belief that the second world war would be similar to the first and that being in France meant her husband would not need to travel back to Great Britain to see them. She also believed that Brittany would be a safe place for her daughter. [12] In November 1939, both Lyon-Smith and her mother travelled to Concarneau via Calais. [13] After Phyllis received a telegram that her husband was back in Great Britain, she decided to move back. However, believing that Brittany was a safe location for her daughter and as she was under 16 was covered by the provisions of the Geneva Conventions, she left her daughter in the charge of her cousins, in June 1940. [14] She also left her jewellery with Lyon-Smith. [14]
On 21 June 1940, the German Army invaded Concarneau and Marcel and Diana's house was requisitioned. [15] The German Army started the process of moving everybody over the age of sixteen away from the coast, so Lyon-Smith was sent to a convent in Châteauneuf. [16] After an ear infection, Lyon-Smith was taken to hospital in Quimper. [16] In December 1940 and while still in hospital, she was interned along with her nanny and other British subjects to a camp on the outskirts of Quimper, then taken by train and lorry, along with many hundreds of other people to the condemned internment Camp (Konzentrationslager) at Besançon (Frontstalag 142 or Caserne Vauban). [17] At the end of 1940, 2,400 women, mostly British, were interned in the barracks, along with 1600 other nationalities, in a camp suitable for only 2000 people. In March 1941, Lyon-Smith was released after the Red Cross visited the camp. [18] She moved to a pension in Neuilly and told to report to the local police station every morning. [19] During the freezing winter of 1941-1942, [20] Lyon-Smith caught pneumonia. [21] While in Neuilly, Lyon-Smith enrolled in a school under a false name, [22] at Cours Montaigne, where she sat the Pre-Baccalaureate and passed. [23]
In July 1941, Lyon-Smith's cousin Diana was able to procure false identity papers, the carte d'identité under the name Maria Cormet, [11] that enabled Lyon-Smith to flee Paris. [23] Diana Provost had made contact with playwright Claude Spaak who had arranged a forger. Spaak was brother to Paul-Henri Spaak and the husband of Suzanne Spaak. Claude Spaak was a member of the French resistance, a close friend of Leopold Trepper [24] who ran the Soviet espionage group, the Red Orchestra ("Rote Kapelle") in France and the Low Countries. [24] The Provosts believed that unoccupied France would be safe. [11] Travelling under a false name, and with the help of several contacts, Lyon-Smith travelled to Bordeaux, met a contact who took her to the border, crossed and then travelled to Montauban and then took a train to Grenoble, where she met Diana's cousin Ruth Peters. [25] However, the next morning Lyon-Smith was arrested during a mass arrest of Jews in Grenoble and taken to the De Bonne barracks internment camp. [25] She was forced to admit to the Prefet running the barracks, that she was an English schoolgirl with an English passport, as the barracks were to be cleared that night. [26] After being released, Lyon-Smith together with Peters, visited the American embassy in Vichy to enquire about arranging travel to Spain; however nothing came of it. [27]
During the winter of 1942–1943, Lyon-Smith and Peters were visited by Claude Spaak at their Lancey hotel. [11] Peters, who was in contact with several members of the Red Orchestra network, [24] was the mistress of Spaak. [11] Spaak was there to organise a plan for Lyon-Smith to escape France. [28] Between September 1942 to September 1943, Lyon-Smith made a number of attempts to cross either the Spanish frontier or the Swiss border at Lake Annecy; however they were unsuccessful. [11] During these escape attempts, Lyon-Smith would often be accompanied by Spaak or Peters. [29] In July 1943, Lyon-Smith was interned for the third time, along with all the British people in Grenoble, but released after four days when the camp was liberated. [30] In August, Lyon-Smith was again ill and treated by a Belgian doctor who was a member of the French resistance, from Saint-Pierre-de-Chartreuse. [31] In late August 1943, Claude Spaak decided that Lyon-Smith and Peters should abandon the escape attempts due to the increasing presence of German forces in the area and move back to Paris separately. [32] After organising new identity papers in the name of Antoinette Louise Savier, Lyon-Smith moved back to Paris, along with Peters who returned to Paris separately. While in Paris, Lyon-Smith's cousin Diana arranged for her to stay with a French family in Chantilly, where she could live unnoticed as a Frenchwoman. [33] In Paris, Lyon-Smith was invited by the Spaaks to visit their apartment. [34] While there, Suzanne Spaak asked Lyon-Smith to write a letter of introduction to the Belgian doctor, for two friends of theirs who needed to go into hiding. Naively, Lyon-Smith assumed the two people had problems with identity papers and needed help. [34] In reality, the letter had been requested by Leopold Trepper for his mistress, Georgina De Winter who was supposed to go to a safehouse in Saint-Pierre-de-Chartreuse that was being run by the Belgian doctor. [24] In mid-October 1943, while on the way to meet the doctor, De Winter was arrested by the Gestapo and the letter was found, implicating Lyon-Smith. [35] De Winter was sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp and survived the war. [35]
On 12 or 21 October 1943 (sources vary), [36] [11] Lyon was arrested in Bourg-la-Reine by the Gestapo unit Sonderkommando Rote Kapelle and taken to be interrogated at 11 Rue des Saussaies in Paris. [11] [37] Diane Provost was also arrested in the same month by the Sonderkommando but released soon afterwards. [11] Spaak went into hiding and managed to evade arrest [11] as did Ruth Peters. [38] Lyon-Smith was interrogated by Sturmbannführer Rolf Müller, who was chief of Aktion Donar , [39] a combined operation by units of Abwehr, Funkabwehr, SIPO-SD and Orpo, that operated in Vichy France from September 1942 onwards, to search for clandestine radio transmissions. [40] Lyon-Smith initially denied being Lyon-Smith, stating that she was Savier, even though her school books had been seized and they were tagged with her real name. [41] She eventually admitted to being Lyon-Smith, as her French was not good enough to maintain the pretense of being a French schoolgirl and was subject to continual interrogation over months. [42] Shortly after her arrest, Lyon-Smith caught a skin disease on her back [43] that was not amenable to normal treatment. [11] Over several weeks, Lyon-Smith slowly formed a dependent relationship with interpreter Karl Gagel, who wanted to marry her. Gagel was always present at the interrogations to translate Müller. [44] Lyon-Smith pretended it was a romantic relationship with Gagel, to ensure she received preferential treatment. [45] Gagel persuaded Heinz Pannwitz, chief of the Sonderkommando Rote Kapelle to allow Lyon-Smith to attend the surgery of a doctor in the local neighbourhood for treatment. [11] [46] As the months passed, passing Christmas into the spring of 1944, Lyon-Smith's condition worsened, as the doctor's treatments failed. [47] By March 1944, Lyon-Smith was seriously ill. [48] On 13 March 1944, she was released on leave of parole, after managing to satisfy the Gestapo that she had no connection with the French Resistance. [11] [48] Lyon-Smith was instructed by Pannwitz to stay with Diane Provost. [11] In April, Lyon-Smith received a phone call from Gagel, which scared her, but she agreed to meet him, and later agreed to meet him once or twice a week to avoid reprisals. [49] At the end of July, Gagel informed Lyon-Smith during a phone call that the Gestapo was leaving Paris and that they should meet to say goodbye, threatening her with the knowledge that he had his service pistol with him. [50]
After the Liberation of Paris on 25 August 1944 Lyon-Smith received a visit from her father, whose division was fighting to the north of Paris, and who arranged for her to fly home to Great Britain. [51] Arriving in London, Lyon-Smith took a train up to Glasgow where she met her mother on the platform of Glasgow Central Station. Phyllis Lyon-Smith had lived in a hotel in Ayr [52] for the duration of the war and worked as a member of the Royal Voluntary Service. [53] After recovering, Lyon-Smith joined the Women's Royal Naval Service (WRNV). [52]
On 15 July 1942, MI5 reported Lyon-Smith by opening a new named intelligence document held at Camp 020, possibly initiated by a word from Brigadier Tristram Lyon-Smith. [11] From then to 9 February 1945, they received and evaluated a number of intelligence reports from several channels, on all parties that were involved including her family, her cousins, De Winter, Gagel, resistance members, the doctor, and others. They even made an attempt to obtain Lyon-Smith's report on her work at the WRNV. On 12 December 1945, MI5 interviewed Lyon-Smith. [11] This was part of a larger investigative operation on the Red Orchestra. [11]
During the interview, Lyon-Smith denied knowing anything about the Spaak's resistance activities. [11] MI5 believed that Lyon-Smith was not as ignorant as she appeared, believing she would have enquired about the letter, about the destination, and what it was for. The agents also wondered why the Gestapo was so lenient. Lyon-Smith believed that it was her influence over Pannwitz, who she persuaded not to report her case to Berlin, that saved her. [11] In a report that Pannwitz made to the CIA in 1959 on the history of the Sonderkommando Rote Kapelle, he stated that Lyon-Smith was a straight-forward honest girl, who would have found it impossible to refuse to help the Spaaks as her father was a Brigadier, and would have never known the true nature of the group's resistance work. [54] Pannwitz had tested her over several months to determine what her attitude to the Soviets was, finding she was hostile to them. [54] So based on her age and her attitude, he decided to release her. [54] Certainly, Horst Kopkow would have known her name, but records do not show it. [11] At the end of the interview, MI5 interrogators had no doubt that Lyon-Smith was withholding information [11] and believed that she almost certainly told the Gestapo everything. [1] In the intelligence report, in a letter from a Nazi source after the war [55] it posits the fact that Lyon-Smith was not interned or jailed in a cell, but instead kept in nominal custody in the Sonderkommando offices in Paris. [55] She was allowed a certain amount of freedom, doing little apart from making tea, listening to the radio or sewing. [56] Certainly in her biography, Lyon-Smith does say she visited the opera to view Die Fledermaus . [57] However, she did not mention Pannwitz in the biography nor present a visage of somebody who was free to walk about the Sonderkommando offices, nor agreeing to marry Gagel. [56] Gagel made two attempts to contact Lyon-Smith after the war but was unsuccessful. [11]
On 20 June 1946, Lyon-Smith married David Ellis, a Lieutenant and the son of a Brigadier Richard Stanley Ellis CBE, MC at Symondsbury Church in Symondsbury. [11] In 1947, Lyon-Smith's mother died. After the war, Lyon-Smith lived in Devon. [22] The couple had a son, Roger Hunt. [58]
Hunt died on 9 October 2010. [58]
Leopold Zakharovich Trepper was a Polish Communist and career Soviet agent of the Red Army Intelligence. With the code name Otto, Trepper had worked with the Red Army since 1930. He was also a resistance fighter and journalist.
Suzanne Spaak, néeAugustine Lorge known as Suzette Spaak was a World War II French Resistance operative. On 21 April 1985, Yad Vashem recognized Spaak as Righteous Among the Nations, for helping to smuggle several Jewish children to safety, by providing them with ration cards and clothing.
The Red Orchestra, as it was known in Germany, was the name given by the Abwehr Section III.F to anti-Nazi resistance workers in August 1941. It primarily referred to a loose network of resistance groups, connected through personal contacts, uniting hundreds of opponents of the Nazi regime. These included groups of friends who held discussions that were centred on Harro Schulze-Boysen, Adam Kuckhoff and Arvid Harnack in Berlin, alongside many others. They printed and distributed prohibited leaflets, posters, and stickers, hoping to incite civil disobedience. They aided Jews and resistance to escape the regime, documented the atrocities of the Nazis, and transmitted military intelligence to the Allies. Contrary to legend, the Red Orchestra was neither directed by Soviet communists nor under a single leadership. It was a network of groups and individuals, often operating independently. To date, about 400 members are known by name.
Maria "Mimi" Terwiel was a German resistance fighter against the Nazi regime. She was active in a group in Berlin that wrote and distributed anti-Nazi and anti-war appeals. As part of what they conceived as a broader action against a collection of anti-fascist resistance groups in Germany and occupied Europe that the Abwehr called the Red Orchestra, in September 1942 the Gestapo arrested Terwiel along with her fiancée Helmut Himpel. Among the leaflets and pamphlets they had copied and distributed for the group were the July and August 1941 sermons of Clemens August Graf von Galen which denounced the regime's Aktion T4 programme of involuntary euthanasia.
Henry Robinson, sometimes known as Henri Robinson, was a Belgian Communist and later intelligence agent of the Communist International (Comintern). Robinson was a leading member of the Soviet espionage group, the Red Orchestra in Paris. Robinson used a number of code names(Andre, Lucien, Leo, Giocomo) and aliases.
This is a list of participants, associates and helpers of, and certain infiltrators into, the Red Orchestra as it was known in Germany. Red Orchestra was the name given by the Abwehr to members of the German resistance to Nazism and anti-Nazi resistance movements in Allied or occupied countries during World War II. Many of the people on this list were arrested by the Abwehr or Gestapo. They were tried at the Nazi Imperial War Court before being executed either by hanging or guillotine, unless otherwise indicated. As the SS-Sonderkommando also took action against Soviet espionage networks within Switzerland, people who worked there are also included here.
Heinz Michael Pannwitz was a German war criminal, Nazi Gestapo officer and later Schutzstaffel (SS) officer. Pannwitz was most notable for directing the investigation into the assassination of Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich on 27 May 1942 in Prague. In the last two years of the war, Pannwitz ran the Sonderkommando Rote Kapelle, a combined Abwehr and Gestapo counterintelligence operation against the Red Orchestra espionage network, in France and the Low Countries.
Anatoly Markovich Gurevich was a Soviet intelligence officer. He was an officer in the GRU operating as "разведчик-нелегал" in Soviet intelligence parlance. Gurevich was a central figure in the anti-Nazi Red Orchestra in France and Belgium during World War II.
Johann Wenzel was a German Communist, highly professional GRU agent and radio operator of the espionage group that was later called the Red Orchestra by the Abwehr in Belgium and the Netherlands. His aliases were Professor, Charles, Bergmann, Hans, and Hermann. Wenzel was most notable as the person who exposed the Red Orchestra after his transmissions were discovered by the Funkabwehr, later leading to his capture by the Gestapo on 29–30 June 1942.
Sonderkommando Rote Kapelle was a German special commission that was created by German High Command in November 1942, in response to the capture of two leading members of a Soviet espionage group that operated in Europe, that was called the Red Orchestra by the Abwehr. The Sonderkommando Rote Kapelle was an internal counter-intelligence operation run by the Abwehr and the Gestapo. It consisted of a small independent Gestapo unit that was commanded by SS-Obersturmbannführer Friedrich Panzinger and its chief investigator was Gestapo officer Karl Giering. Its remit was to discover and arrest members of the Red Orchestra in Germany, Belgium, France, Netherlands, Switzerland and Italy during World War II.
Karl Giering was SS-Hauptsturmführer and Criminal Councillor in the Geheimes Staatspolizeiamt Berlin (Gestapo) and later Head of Department IV A 2 in the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA). Giering is regarded as one of the most dangerous persecutors of the communist resistance against the Nazi regime. He commanded the Gestapo to smash the apparatus of the Betriebsberichterstattung (BB) of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and conducted investigations against the Soviet espionage network known as the Red Orchestra while part of the Sonderkommando Rote Kapelle.
Hillel Katz was a Polish Jewish Communist, who was an important member of a Soviet espionage network in occupied France, that the German Abwehr intelligence service later called the "Red Orchestra". In the role of an underground executive and recruiter, he acted as both secretary and assistant to Leopold Trepper and liaised between Léon Grossvogel and Henry Robinson in matters relating to the running of the French covert black market trading company Simex. Katz had a number of aliases that he used to disguise his identity, including Andre Dubois, Rene and Le Petite Andre.
Ingeborg Mathilde Dolores Kummerow was a Berlin office worker and housewife who, in 1936, had married Dr Hans-Heinrich Kummerow, a high-flying telecommunications engineer, employed in the research and development department at Loewe-Radio-AG. The couple had two sons.
Malvina Gruber, née Hofstadterova was a Jewish Comintern agent, who was part of a Soviet intelligence network in Belgium and France, that was later called the Red Orchestra by the Abwehr, during Nazi regime. Gruber worked as a cutout, but her specialism was couriering people across borders. From 1938 to 1942, Gruber worked as assistant to Soviet agent Abraham Rajchmann, a forger, who provided identity papers, e.g. the Kennkarte, Carte d'identité and travel permits, for the espionage group. At the beginning of 1942, she was arrested in Brussels by the Abwehr.
Basile Maximovitch was a Russian aristocrat and civil mining engineer. He became a Soviet agent by choice and subsequently became an important member of the Red Orchestra organisation in France during World War II. Maximovitch was the son of a Cavalry officer Baron Maximovitch, who held the rank of General, on the staff of Imperial Russian Army.
Anna Pavlovna Maximovitch was a Russian aristocrat and neuropsychiatrist, who became an informer and important member of the Red Orchestra organisation in France during World War II.
Isidore Springer was Belgian diamond dealer and communist who became an important member of the Red Orchestra organisation in Belgium and later France during World War II. Springer worked as a recruiter and courier between Leopold Trepper, a Soviet agent who was the technical director of Soviet espionage in Western Europe, and Anatoly Gurevich, also a Soviet agent, in Belgium. He would later run the 6th network of Trepper's seven espionage networks in France, providing intelligence from US and Belgian diplomats. His aliases were Romeo, Verlaine, Walter van Vliet, Fred and Sabor.
Alfred Valentin Corbin was a French communist sympathiser, editor and reviewer, commercial director, and resistance fighter. Before the war, Corbin ran a poultry feed business with his brother. After serving in the French Foreign Legion in the lead up to the war, Corbin was recruited by Soviet intelligence to run a black market trading company. In 1941, Corbin worked as a director of the Paris-based, Simex black market trading company, that was in reality a cover for a Soviet espionage organisation, later known as the Red Orchestra.
Fernand Baptistin Pauriol was a French communist, journalist and resistance fighter with the French Communist Party (PCF) during World War II. As a young man, Pauriol trained and worked as a sailor, later specialising in wireless telegraphy. Under the influence of his father, he became interested in communist politics and that led him to join the PCF. In the later interwar period, he swapped his maritime career for a career working underground in the PCF. When the war started, his skills in building radio transmitters enabled him to become the director of communications for PCF. He became a member of a Soviet espionage group later called the Red Orchestra by the Abwehr and used the alias "Duval". He was eventually arrested by the Sonderkommando Rote Kapelle and shot.
Heinrich Josef Reiser was a German Nazi war criminal, SS officer as well as a member of the Gestapo and the SD. In 1940, he was sent to Paris to work in the Sonderkommando Rote Kapelle. In 1943, Reiser was in line to become the commanding officer of the Sonderkommando Rote Kapelle as a replacement for Karl Giering. He briefly held the position when Giering fell ill but was later transferred to the Karlsruhe Gestapo towards the end of World War II where he was involved in the repression of forced foreign labourers. From 1950 onwards, he was an intelligence officer of the Gehlen Organization and the resulting Federal Intelligence Service. He became a major proponent for the continued existence of anti-Nazi resistance organisations in West Germany after the war, including Red Orchestra and Schwarze Kapelle. This was an attempt to correct the perceived misperceptions of the Gestapo as a criminal organisation by identifying and purging former opponents of the Nazi regime from German public life and public opinion, in operations that were fully supported by the Gehlen organisation.