A bronze statue, sculpted by London-based artist Karen Newman, was unveiled by Britain’s Princess Anne on November 8, 2012. You can see a photo of the unveiling below. Personally, I don’t care for this sculpture. I think that Noor should not be shown with her head bowed. She should have her head lifted with a defiant expression on her face, as she shouts Liberté, her last dying word, before she was shot in the head at Dachau, as witnessed by a prisoner who came forward years later. (Lies about Noor Inayat Khan have been told so often that they are now true lies.)
A reader of my blog make a comment on a previous post that I wrote about Noor Inayat Khan, the famous “Spy Princess” in the British SOE. He mentioned that there was a witness to the arrival of Noor at Dachau. I found this hard to believe until I saw a YouTube video in which someone said that Noor had arrived at Dachau “in chains.” That would have been quite a sight; every prisoner in the camp would have pushed forward to see this spectacale.
Many survivors of Dachau are still alive, and I am not surprised that someone has finally come forward to tell about witnessing the arrival of Noor at Dachau. The words “in chains” are at 2:10 in the YouTube video which has been copyrighted, and cannot be shown here.
My photo below shows the gatehouse at Dachau, as it looked in 2007
Gatehouse entrance to Dachau concentration camp
As my photos of the Dachau gatehouse show, everyone inside the camp would have been able to see Noor hobbling through the gate with her feet in chains. With so many prisoners to witness the coming and going of people into the camp, there was no need for the men in the gatehouse to keep records of arrivals and departures. A bar over the pedestrian door on the gate could be removed to allow entry into the camp without opening the entire gate which was operated by remote control in the gatehouse. So it would have been easy to sneak Noor Inayat Khan into Dachau with no one in the gatehouse knowing about it. (There are no records of her entry into Dachau.)
Gatehouse and Arbeit Macht Frei gate at Dachau
Unfortunately, I have been unable to find any information on the name of the witness who saw Noor arrive in chains. I have also not been able to find any photos of prisoners arriving at Dachau in chains. The old photo below, which is on my own website, shows German war criminals marching out of Dachau.
The photo above shows German “war criminals” leaving Dachau, which had been converted into War Crimes Enclosure No. 1 after the Dachau concentration camp was liberated and Germany surrendered to the Allies. Note that they are not “in chains.”
Scrapbookpages Blog 
Noor Inayat Khan, her actual name: Noor-un-nisa Inayat Khan
Unlike the two other women George Cross recipients of the war, Odette Hallowes and Violette Szabo, Noor’s training reports were less than encouraging. But her deep moral convictions were interpreted by others as a sign of a temperamental and difficult person. This was a potentially serious problem: The final report from Beaulieu characterised her as being “not over-burdened with brains” and concluded that it was “very doubtful whether she is really suited to work in the field”. On the night of 16/17 June Noor left RAF Tangmere in one of two Lysander aircraft,it was an inauspicious start to her secret career: (she apparently failed in parachute jumps) not only would her three fellow passengers – Diana Rowden, Cecily Lefort and Charles Skepper – all die in captivity, but the man waiting to greet them was Henri Déricourt, a double agent working with the Germans. Through him, the Gestapo knew when and where the flights would land, and planted spies to trail the agents as they left to join their networks. Things seemed to be going well, but disaster was about to strike. On 24 June an unfortunate chain of events led to Suttill, Norman and their courier Andrée Borrel all being arrested, effectively decapitating PROSPER. [Andree Borrel stayed at my In-Laws Bakery at Dachau and got engaged to an SS-man, we don’t know of her fate] Having slipped through the Germans’ fingers for four months, Noor’s downfall was finally brought about by an act of petty jealousy. Though never proved, it’s likely that it was Garry’s sister, Renée, who contacted the German counter-espionage service (the Sicherheitsdienst, or SD) and sold her out, giving them Noor’s safe house address in rue de la Faisanderie for the price of 100,000 francs. The first attempt to catch Noor failed. When she re-entered the apartment that afternoon she found a German agent was waiting for her, unarmed,she bit and clawed at him ferociously until he could draw his gun [He could have shot her there and then]
The Germans had bought Madeleine cheaply – it was a tenth of what they would have been willing to pay for such a prize. On 27 November she arrived at Pforzheim prison, and according to the prison governor Wilhelm Krauss the local Gestapo were particular about her treatment: she was to be kept in strict solitary confinement, chained hand and foot and put on the lowest rations. Krauss claimed that he had felt sorry for her and attempted to remove the chains, but that the Gestapo had insisted he replace them. With no idea where they were going, they were put aboard a carriage for Munich. After travelling all day, they were ordered to walk and eventually passed through the gate at Dachau concentration camp. No official record of what happened next was kept, but according to an anonymous witness later interviewed by a Canadian Intelligence officer, Beekman, Plewman and Damerment the women were that night taken to the crematorium and shot. Noor, perhaps singled out because of her “Creole” skin and reputation as a “dangerous prisoner”, was chained, kicked and almost beaten to death by SS officer Friedrich Wilhelm Ruppert, before he finally shot her with a pistol the next day.
As the war came to an end, the job of searching for missing agents was taken up by F Section’s Intelligence officer, Vera Atkins. At first she mistakenly concluded that Noor must have been one of four women executed at Natzeiler concentration camp in July 1944: in fact this agent was another wireless operator, Sonia Olschanesky, whose physical description had been similar. But in 1946 testimony from Yolande Lagrave revealed that Noor had been at Pforzheim prison, and further evidence from the prison records and two SS guards who escorted Noor’s party to Dachau finally solved the puzzle. Atkins also conducted interviews with Kieffer and Goetz, which filled in some of the gaps about her time in Paris. Later tried for war crimes, Noor’s executioner Ruppert was hanged in May 1946. Renée Garry was acquitted by a French court of denouncing Noor to the SD. Caught a few days after Noor, Emile Garry was deported and executed at Buchenwald concentration camp in September 1944. There is no indication that Noor was taken from the Dachau train station in irons into the camp, it is more than likely she was handcuffed, but had no leg irons. this claim would have been rather difficult and a gullible suggestions for public consumptions.
PS.: She was Russian born, brought up by her Mystic Muslim Cult father as a pacifist, makes me wonder if she was the right person as an agent.
Comment by Herbert Stolpmann — November 29, 2012 @ 6:28 pm
Well responded; everything you’ve written I also know to be true of Noor and I’d agree with reference to ‘the right person as an agent’. However, she was most certainly courageous to do such a daring job – I have courage, but that much…I don’t know..I suppose it depends upon your convictions at the time and none of us can say how we would react to situations such as this until you are in that situation I suppose.
Comment by mogseyward — December 5, 2012 @ 3:52 am
This part of the comment by Herbert Stolpmann is from the official story, which is not necessarily the truth:
“With no idea where they were going, they were put aboard a carriage for Munich. After travelling all day, they were ordered to walk and eventually passed through the gate at Dachau concentration camp. No official record of what happened next was kept, but according to an anonymous witness later interviewed by a Canadian Intelligence officer, Beekman, Plewman and Damerment the women were that night taken to the crematorium and shot. Noor, perhaps singled out because of her “Creole” skin and reputation as a “dangerous prisoner”, was chained, kicked and almost beaten to death by SS officer Friedrich Wilhelm Ruppert, before he finally shot her with a pistol the next day.
As the war came to an end, the job of searching for missing agents was taken up by F Section’s Intelligence officer, Vera Atkins. At first she mistakenly concluded that Noor must have been one of four women executed at Natzeiler concentration camp in July 1944: in fact this agent was another wireless operator, Sonia Olschanesky, whose physical description had been similar. But in 1946 testimony from Yolande Lagrave revealed that Noor had been at Pforzheim prison, and further evidence from the prison records and two SS guards who escorted Noor’s party to Dachau finally solved the puzzle.”
I have blogged many times about the above information, which I don’t think is correct.
Comment by furtherglory — December 5, 2012 @ 5:48 am
FG
Although I have quoted from official documents, there are some impressions that, the way you put it Noor Inayat Khan was entering the infamous gate “Arbeit macht frei” shackled in leg iron or at least hand-cuffed, which “must have been a sight for other prisoners”. Lets be very clear about one thing, Dachau was a Men’s Camp and had no provisions for women in that part of the camp. Those that were kept, did stay within the Military Complex in secured facilitiies and there were a number of them that could have been used. Furthermore the Secret Bullet Decree of the Supreme Command of the Army (Obverkommando der Wehrmacht) or OKW dated March 4th 1944 states quite clearly:…Unless the circumstances render a special transport imperative, the prisoners are to be put in irons on transport-not on the station if it is subject to view by the public. That Noor Khan would shuffle almost one mile in leg irons from the train station to the camp, is ridicules.
The other point that struck me, that you comment “that Noor should not be shown with her head bowed”. I agree, but you failed to mention the entire episode, that she was betrayed and now holds her head more in anguish than in pride.
Following is the what every reader should know, that she was perhaps one of many that were sacrificed for the “Good of the All”
Henri Déricourt
I quote partly: In the summer of 1943 the SD arrested several SOE agents and French resistance fighters and it was soon reported to London by some of the remaining agents on the ground that Déricourt had had regular contact with senior SD officers. However, senior SOE people and even Maurice Buckmaster himself refused to believe the reports and Déricourt continued his work in France until February 1944. Recent evidence[which?] makes it clear that Déricourt established secret contacts with the SD straight after SOE parachuted him into France – in January 1943. Déricourt’s possible duplicity was revealed after the war when war crimes investigators (including Vera Atkins) received absolute information from German sources that Dericourt had been one of their agents, BOE48, and that the information he provided had led to the arrest and execution of several SOE agents. After the war French authorities arrested Dericourt in November 1946. At his 1948 trial, a number of witnesses were unavailable to the prosecutors and Déricourt’s own testimony was somewhat ambiguous. The prosecution case collapsed when the senior SOE figure Nicholas Bodington testified that he had authorised Déricourt to make and maintain contacts with the Germans. Déricourt was acquitted. This revelation came as a shock to all the other former SOE officers, and so began the mystery behind Bodington’s testimony. Had someone authorised Bodington to give such evidence? Who had really authorised Déricourt to make contact with the Germans – and why? Déricourt himself claimed later that SOE agents were deliberately sacrificed to distract attention from the Allied invasion plans. In fact, evidence has since emerged that Dericourt had been ‘run’ by MI6 throughout, and that his work for SOE had just been a cover to get him close to the Germans. This possibility was acknowledged by the SOE’s Second in Command Harry Sporborg, who investigated Dericourt upon his return from France in February 1944. “There was no doubt whatsoever in my mind that Déricourt was being employed by MI6 for functions which were outside SOE’s sphere of operations.” Henri Dericourt was believed killed in an aircraft accident on November 21, 1962 over Laos
Comment by Herbert Stolpmann — December 12, 2012 @ 1:08 am
You wrote: “That Noor Khan would shuffle almost one mile in leg irons from the train station to the camp, is ridicules.” […]
“…the way you put it Noor Inayat Khan was entering the infamous gate “Arbeit macht frei” shackled in leg iron or at least hand-cuffed, which “must have been a sight for other prisoners”.
I agree with you. I was writing facetiously. I know that she would not have been in leg irons IF she had been brought to Dachau, which she most certainly was not. The claim that she was brought to Dachau “in chains” is only one clue that Noor was NOT BROUGHT TO DACHAU at all. (The term “in chains” means “leg irons” to me, not hand cuffed.)
You wrote: “…you failed to mention the entire episode, that she was betrayed and now holds her head more in anguish than in pride.”
I have written enough about Noor and the other women in the SOE to fill a book. I have written extensively on my website and on my blog about Noor and the others. I have done extensive research on this subject and I do not believe that Noor was executed. I absolutely believe that Noor was betrayed by the British, and that is why they are going to great lengths to honor her now.
Comment by furtherglory — December 12, 2012 @ 6:27 am