Remembering Noor Inayat Khan, the Indian Spy Princess Who Died Fighting the Nazis
Born in Moscow to Sufi musician father, Hazrat Inayat Khan, and American mother, Ora Ray, on January 1, 1914, Noor Inayat was a direct descendant of Tipu Sultan (the 18th century ruler of Mysore). The eruption of of World War I compelled her family to leave Russia and move to France. They settled in Suresnes, a peaceful hilltop suburb of Paris.
Noor’s tranquil life was rudely interrupted by the onset of the World War II in 1940. When Paris fell to German invasion, she lost her home and had to flee with her family to London. Swearing to help take down fascism, she immediately volunteered for the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF).
As much as she was determined to support the Allies in their fight against the Nazis, Noor never forgot India.
During her interview for a commission in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF), Noor bluntly told her interrogators that after the war, she would devote her life to the cause of Indian independence from colonial rule. She said this despite knowing that saying this could result in her not getting the job, or worse, being labeled treasonous!
In 1942, Noor joined Churchill’s secret Special Operations Executive (SOE). Created following the fall of France, the undercover agents of SOE had been instructed to ‘set Europe ablaze’ by helping local resistance movements, spying on the enemy and sabotaging the set-up in enemy-held territories.
Reacting quickly, Noor somehow managed to escape but by the end of the sweep, she was the only undercover radio operator left in Paris. The British offered to extradite her but she refused, knowing how crucial her work was. What she did next exceeded what everybody expected from her. For next three months, she evaded and outran the Gestapo, changing her location and disguise on a nearly daily basis. All this while, she continued to single-handedly send messages from the entire region back to London.
Noor was eventually caught after a double agent betrayed her to the Gestapo. Not one to go down quietly, the feisty princess fought her captors with all she had: punching, kicking and even biting. The Gestapo needed six burly men to hold her down as they arrested her!
A few hours into imprisonment, Noor made her first daring attempt at escape. Demanding that the door be shut to protect her modesty while she took a bath, she used the opportunity to escape from the bathroom window and nimbly clamber onto the roof. But the noise had alerted the guards, who caught her just as she was planning to shimmy down a drain pipe. After she made another unsuccessful escape attempt, Noor was kept shackled in chains, in solitary confinement, and relentlessly subjected to violent interrogations. And yet, the woman, who once failed her practice interrogations, never revealed a single piece of information. After almost a year in captivity, she was transferred to Dachau concentration camp along with three other spies. While her companions were executed almost immediately after arrival, Noor was brutally tortured yet again before being shot to death on September 13, 1944. According to eyewitnesses, her last word (that she screamed at the Nazi shooting squad) was “liberte”.
Described as a “modern-day Joan of Arc” by the Mayor of Paris, Noor was posthumously awarded Croix se Guerre, France’s best known military decoration.
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