Noor- Un- Nisa Inayat Khan

Noor- Un- Nisa Inayat Khan was known as Nora. She was born New Years Day 1914 in Moscow, Russia. She was the eldest child of an Indian father and American mother. In 1914, she moved to London, and then Paris, where she studied at the Sorbonne and the Paris Conservatory. She fled back to in England, when Germany invaded France.

Wishing to serve, Nora joined the WAAF and trained as a wireless operator, and by June 1941 she was at Bomber Training School. She was reported as kind, keen and hard-working. With the support of Vera Atkins, an Intelligence Officer in the French Section, Nora joined the SOE (Special Operations Executive).

In June 1943, she became the first female wireless operator to be dropped into occupied Europe, where she made her way to Paris and used the cover of a ‘child’s nurse’.  Betrayed by a collaborator, Nora was arrested in October 1943 and interrogated before attempting to escape twice. She gave the Germans no information, but they were able to fool the British into believing that they were still communicating with their agent and this resulted in the captured of newly dropped agents.

Nora managed to escape in November 1943, but was quickly recaptured. As punishment, she was kept shackled and in solitary for ten months, before being transferred to Dachau Camp. It was here that she and three other female SOE agents were executed.

For her service, Nora was Mentioned in Dispatches, and posthumously awarded the George Cross and then the Croix de Guerre and in 2011 a bronze bust of Nora was unveiled in Gordon Square, London.

The IBCC has recorded and preserved 1000’s of first-hand accounts of life during the War, they are available, for free, for everyone on the IBCC’s Digital Archive.

Want to find out about Vera Atkins?  IBCC’s Blog Space to read more.