Sonia Olschanezky (25 December 1923 – 6 July 1944) was a member of the French Resistance and the Special Operations Executive during World War II. Olschanezky was a member of the SOE's Juggler circuit in occupied France where she operated as a courier until she was arrested by the Gestapo and was subsequently executed at the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp.
Early life
Olschanezky was born in Chemnitz, Germany. Her father, Eli Olschanezky, was born in Odessa and came to Germany to study chemical engineering. He met Olschanezky's mother, Helene, at a dance given by the Jewish community in Leipzig. They were engaged on 1 August 1914, the day Germany declared war on Russia. Russian citizens in Germany were then subject to internment. Helene's father, a portrait painter from Minsk used his society contacts to arrange for Eli's release from internment after six months on condition that he report every week to the police station in Chemnitz. As an enemy alien, he was unable to work as a chemical engineer and took a job as a sales representative for a manufacturer of ladies' stockings.
In September 1916 Olschanezky's parents were married and set up house in Chemnitz where their three children were born. Enoch (25 September 191718 April 1944), Tobias (who later changed his name to Serge; March 1919) and Sonia (25 December 1923). The family lived a comfortable bourgeois life between the wars, with a chauffeur, a cook, and a governess for the children in their apartment on the Hellenenstrasse. As secular Jews, the Olschanezkys celebrated major Jewish holidays and contributed to Jewish charities including the Jewish National Fund.
In 1926 the family left Germany for Bucharest, where Eli Olschanezky had been invited to oversee the construction of, and then run, a factory producing silk stockings. After three years his partners stopped credit and the business failed, which resulted in the family villa and possessions being sold. The family moved to Paris in January 1930 and settled into a pension de famille in the Thirteenth Arrondissement. Eli Olschanezky tried to re-establish himself in business but found himself cheated of his money, which left him sick and demoralised, and the family moved to cheaper accommodation. Serge (formerly Tobias), then aged 15, left school and, along with his brother Enoch, got a job in a hotel.
In Paris, Olschanezky became a dance student, and when the manager of a children's theatre saw her in class one day she was asked to join the theatre company. Her parents said no at first, but she eventually won them over, and the age of 10 she began performing with Le Théâtre du Petit Monde on Thursday afternoons, the school holiday. Through the influence of a distant relative she appeared on television in a demonstration of the new medium at the 1937 International Exposition in Paris. While still a schoolgirl, she was now working as a performer, appearing at school dances and private affairs, using the professional name of Sonia Olys.
Occupation and internment
In May 1940, France was invaded by the German Army. After the French surrender, the new leader, Henri-Philippe Petain, cooperated in the persecution of the Jews in the country.
In May 1942, orders were given for all Jewish men, women and children to wear a six-pointed yellow star on their clothing. The following month, Olschanezky was arrested and sent to the Drancy deportation camp, where she waited being sent to an extermination camp in Nazi Germany.
Her mother contacted friends in Germany who managed to produce false papers that stated that Olschanezky had "economically valuable skills" needed for the war effort. On the production of the papers and the payment of money to a German official, Olschanezky was freed in the autumn of 1942. After her release she told her mother, that she felt she had to "do something to defend us. Others won’t do it for us. We must do it for ourselves." When her mother asked if she didn't think she had already lost enough, she replied that if everyone said that, no one would do anything. Through one of the families for whom she had worked, she met Jacques Weil, who would later become Olschanezky's fiancé, and found an opportunity to become a résistant.