The Girlfriends: Spotlight, E16: Hélène Outwits the Nazis

Summary

The Girlfriends: Spotlight – E16: Hélène Outwits the Nazis

Date: March 2, 2026
Host: Anna Sinfield
Guest: Gwen Strauss (author of The Nine)
Produced by: iHeartPodcasts and Novel

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Episode Overview

In this gripping episode, host Anna Sinfield tells the remarkable true story of Hélène, a brilliant member of the French Resistance during WWII, who survived brutal Nazi concentration camps and orchestrated her own and eight fellow prisoners’ escape. Guided by Gwen Strauss—the great-niece of Hélène and author of the book The Nine—the show vividly recounts tales of courage, resourcefulness, and indomitable female friendship amid the darkness of war.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introduction and Historical Setting

• [02:45] Anna Sinfield opens with a content warning for themes of torture and violence before immersing listeners in a vivid description of the chaotic Nazi death marches as WWII draws to a close.
• [02:55] The focus shifts to nine concealed women, pretending to be corpses to escape detection—“Helene is the leader... and she has a plan.”

2. Hélène’s Background and Early Resistance Work

• [05:45] Gwen Strauss describes Hélène as highly educated—a chemist, mathematician, discreet, fashionable, multilingual, and elegant, even in old age.

  “She was brilliant, especially for her time... she was a chemist and also a mathematician... she was an incredibly good linguist.” – Gwen Strauss [05:45]

• [07:11] At age 23, Hélène stayed in Nazi-occupied Paris, allegedly for studies, but in reality to join the Resistance, organizing clandestine Allied parachute drops and decoding BBC messages.

  “She would listen to the radio and wait for messages from Britain... She would then crack the codes to discover where and when the next drop would be.” – Anna Sinfield [07:11]

• [07:49] High-risk operations required her to light landing strips, rapidly hide parachutes, and disperse before the Gestapo arrived—often with only a 20-minute margin.

3. Capture and Suffering

• [11:47] After nearly 10 months of eluding capture, Hélène is arrested. She attempts to hide her Resistance message, but is eventually transferred to the infamous Angers prison.
• [13:07] Gwen chillingly details torture: “I know that they waterboarded her. I know they pulled out her fingernails and that she would often be sent back to her cell in a stretcher.” [13:07]
• [13:26] Hélène keeps her mind sharp by writing unsolved mathematical formulas on her cell wall—an effort to mentally escape confinement.

4. The Concentration Camps

• [14:55] On D-Day, as male prisoners are executed, Hélène is deported to Ravensbruck and then Hassag Leipzig, separated from France and thrust among thousands of suffering women.

Meet The Nine

• [20:29]–[22:41] Gwen introduces each member of “The Nine”:

  • Jose – Spanish, beautiful singing voice
  • Zinka (Renée) – Tiny, brave, just had a child taken from her
  • Zaza – Witty, optimistic
  • Lon & Gigi – Dutch, joined Resistance, quickly caught
  • Minna – A flirty Breton, joined for love
  • Jacqueline – Oldest, a widow, swears like a sailor, had diphtheria
  • Nicole – Nearly caught by Klaus Barbie, disguised as a nurse
  • Hélène – Gwen’s aunt, chemist and polyglot

  “They were all different... different in every way. And yet they managed to be great friends. And all those kind of differences didn't matter. They were very much united in helping each other survive.” – Gwen Strauss [22:41]

Solidarity and Survival

• [23:45] The women invent the “bowl of solidarity”— pooling bits of food to give the most despondent among them.

  “It wasn't dog eat dog at all. It was this idea that we can only survive if we help each other.” – Gwen Strauss [23:45]

• [24:47] Creativity sustains them: making hats from mattress scraps, dancing, and even crafting secret “cookbooks” full of dreamed-of decadent recipes.

  "Starving people love to talk about food... and so they started to write down the recipes on scraps of paper and pass them around." – Gwen Strauss [25:12]

Resistance Inside the Camp

• [26:28] Hélène sabotages production (with help from a sympathetic factory head) by manipulating thermostats so munitions are defective—a sophisticated act of resistance that’s never discovered.

  "She did not stop resisting... when she figured out how to sabotage the production, she felt so happy." – Gwen Strauss [27:13]

5. The Escape: Outwitting the Nazis

End of the War & The Death March

• [27:48]–[28:55] The factory is bombed as Allies push nearer; all camp prisoners are forced on a brutal death march—anyone who falters is shot.

• [32:37] The women realize their situation is desperate and hatch an escape plan. During a pause on the march:

  “Helene and Lan started to talk, and...we know they're going to kill us at the end of this or we're going to die, so we have to escape.” – Gwen Strauss [32:37]

• [34:05] When the guards are out of sight, Hélène signals and they hide among corpses in a ditch, letting the march pass by before fleeing.

  “They slid off into the ditch along the road... piled on top of each other like a pile of dead bodies and let the march continue past them.” – Gwen Strauss [34:05]

Flight Across Germany

• [35:34]–[39:12] For 10 days they evade Nazis and Russians, subsisting on kindness from strangers and their own ingenuity.
• They cross a raging river on slick stones in prison clogs, some losing their few precious possessions.

Finding the Americans and Freedom

• [39:12] On the verge of collapse, they’re rescued by American soldiers.

  “The soldiers find them and like, ask them if they want chewing gum... They all climb into their jeep and they bring them back to the base.” – Gwen Strauss [39:12]

• [40:51] All nine survive and sleep together in a bed, finally safe under American guard.

6. Aftermath, Loss, and Legacy

• [42:00] Hélène stays on in Germany to assist the Allies, later driving home in an American military vehicle—her mother overjoyed, her father in disbelief.

• [42:51] Upon return, the women are often met with suspicion or judgment, not celebration:

  “Men were commended for their bravery, but the women were treated with disdain.” – Anna Sinfield [43:20] “If you had been in the Resistance and young and survived, it meant you had slept around or been a prostitute... That’s a lot of the reason there was a lot of silence about it after the war.” – Gwen Strauss [43:36]

• Gwen dedicates years to researching their stories, culminating in her book The Nine. Through interviews with descendants—like Zinka’s daughter, France—she brings a sense of closure and validation to the families.

  “She fought to survive because of you. And it was like kind of a. It was a gift that I could give her.” – Gwen Strauss [45:31]

7. Enduring Lessons & Inspiration

• The episode highlights that resistance can take many forms: not only acts of sabotage, but sustaining fellow humans through solidarity and compassion.

• Gwen reflects:

  “There’s all these different ways to resist. It’s not just, you know, throwing a Molotov cocktail at something. ... The way that they helped each other out really moved me and made me realize, oh, there’s all these different ways to resist.” – Gwen Strauss [47:22]

• Anna closes with reflections on how the relatability of these women and their longing for simple pleasures (wine, a cigarette, being by the sea) connects the past to the present, showing heroism is not always grand or unattainable.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Hélène's Motivation:

  “I asked her... 'why were you so brave?'... And she said she didn't even think about it, 'cause I had to.” – Gwen Strauss [09:34]

• Solidarity over Self-Preservation:

  “It wasn't dog eat dog at all. It was this idea that we can only survive if we help each other.” – Gwen Strauss [23:45]

• Sabotage as Resistance:

  “She didn't stop resisting... when she figured out how to sabotage the production, she felt so happy. Like, it was like she was still a soldier.” – Gwen Strauss [27:13]

• On the Joy After Liberation:

  “Nicole remembered eating [bread and jam] and... only a few hours earlier, she was ready to die. And there she's sitting in the sun, eating this feast.” [36:49]

• Rescuers and Cultural Memory:

  “Lon just...ever since then...had a thing for men in uniform... The greatest thing ever.” [40:06]

• Postwar Silence:

  “If you had been in the Resistance and young and survived, it meant you had slept around or been a prostitute... There was a lot of silence about it after the war. People didn’t talk about it.” – Gwen Strauss [43:36]

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Key Timestamps

• [02:45] Content warning and opening: The death march and Hélène’s concealed escape plan
• [05:45]–[07:49] Hélène’s background, recruitment, and parachute-drop operations
• [11:47]–[14:55] Hélène’s arrest, torture, and endurance at Angers prison
• [19:53]–[25:50] At Hassag Leipzig: Introduction of “The Nine” and solidarity stories
• [26:28]–[27:13] Sabotaging Nazi munitions in the factory
• [28:00]–[35:12] Death march, escape plan, and the perilous journey
• [39:12] Encounter with American liberators—emotional peak
• [42:00]–[43:58] Aftermath: Postwar challenges and passage of years
• [45:06]–[47:22] Tracing descendants, legacy, and lessons for today’s world

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Episode Themes and Takeaways

• Female Solidarity as Survival: The “bowl of solidarity” and daily support defy the dehumanization of camp life.
• Forms of Resistance: Courage isn’t always dramatic; acts of care, sabotage, and creative determination are vital.
• Erased Histories: The episode strongly addresses the historical silencing of women’s war heroism and the enduring impact on families and memory.
• The Power of Storytelling: Researching and telling these stories restores dignity and lets us find inspiration in ordinary people facing extraordinary circumstances.

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Final Reflection

Host Anna Sinfield and guest Gwen Strauss together deliver a story that not only commemorates lost heroines but seamlessly connects their legacy to the present:

"It makes me feel that perhaps we've all got a bit of the nine's courage locked away in us, even if I hope we never have to use it." – Anna Sinfield [48:14]

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Further Reading: Gwen Strauss’s book The Nine explores the full story of these women’s heroism and what became of them after the war.
Charity Highlighted: Womankind Worldwide (womankind.org.uk)

Listen for Next Episode: Stories of resistance against the Taliban.

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Transcript

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[Anna Sinfield]

I wanted to give you a heads up that this story discusses concentration camps in Nazi Germany. There will be some mentions of torture and violence, but you will also get to hear about nine amazing female resistance fighters and how their friendship was the key to their survival. Thousands of women are marching. They are organized in rows of five blocks of 100 and groups of a thousand. They are wearing wooden clogs that scratch and slip on the dirt road. Their thin coats are emblazoned with a thick white cross on the back. They are marked as Prisoners. It is spring 1945. We are in Germany and the writing is on the wall for the Nazis. Heinrich Himmler has ordered the evacuation of all concentration camps. These women are on a death march. They don't know where they're going. They just know that they have to keep walking. If they stumble out of line, they'll be shot. Beside the road is a ditch, and there in the ditch are nine women. They are arranged in a pile like corpses, but they're alive. Helene is the leader of this group of women and she has a plan. If she and her friends can pull it off, they will finally be free. They have all suffered torture, starvation, forced labor and disease. But through all of that they also had each other wicked jokes, rebellious schemes, and tender, nurturing support. They never stopped fighting. From Alene's position, face down in the mud, all she can hear is the thud, thud, thud of clogs trooping past. Her body is completely motionless, but her heart is racing. She listens intently until the final few steps disappear into the distance. Then she grabs her friend's hands and runs. I'm Anna Sinfield and from the teams At Novel and iHeart podcasts, this is the Girlfriend Spotlight, where we tell stories of women winning. Today, Helene outsmarts the Nazis. For as long as she's known her, Gwen Strauss has admired her great Aunt Helene.

[Gwen Strauss]

She was brilliant, especially for her time. She was highly educated. She was a chemist and also a mathematician, and she continued to work her whole life after the war. I obviously Knew her more as an elderly woman in her 80s, 90s. She was very elegant when I knew her, always really well dressed. She wore sort of Chanel fashion, beautiful tailored outfits. She always had beautifully manicured fingernails and had a lovely voice as well and spoke gorgeous French and also spoke English really well. And she also spoke Russian and Polish and German. Wow, she was a polyglot. Yeah, she was an incredibly good linguist.

[Anna Sinfield]

Gwen knew that Helene was impressive, but she didn't know just how seriously impressive she was until one day when they

[Gwen Strauss]

were having lunch, she started telling me this incredible story. I was so. I was gobsmacked, really. I mean, I was just like, are you kidding?

[Anna Sinfield]

Helene tells Gwen a story that starts back in 1943, four years into the Second World War. Helene is in her early 20s, living in Paris. The city and most of the rest of France is under Nazi occupation. Helene's father, a Lithuanian Russian Jew, has fled the country with her mother.

[Gwen Strauss]

They had gone to Switzerland and left her behind and she supposedly was behind to continue her studies. And also she had a job at a factory there as a chemist. But she stayed behind actually to work in the Resistance.

[Anna Sinfield]

23 year old Alene had joined the French Resistance, a group of ordinary citizens who opposed the Nazi occupation of France. They did everything they could to undermine the regime. Alain was involved in all sorts of operations, but some of the most high risk involved organising secret parachute drops from the Allies. She would listen to the radio and wait for messages from Britain that were hidden in BBC broadcasts. She would then crack the codes to discover where and when the next drop would be. Then she would organize a group of fighters to be there to receive it.

[Gwen Strauss]

She would liaise with all the different resistance groups and have the field ready for when the plane would come. And it would always be on a full moon or a few days around the full moon, because the plane had to have some visibility, but that also makes you very visible. So she had to choose the right kind of place, where it was far enough away from people perhaps seeing it.

[Anna Sinfield]

Helene and her band of comrades would hide in the shadows of trees and hedges bordering the field.

[Gwen Strauss]

And then when they heard the little single engine plane probably coming from England, first they would do is she would do a signal, like a flashlight flashing signal to the plane. And if the plane signaled back, they would all around the perimeter they would light flashlights or lanterns. So they would light up a Runway. When they made the drop, they had to very quickly dig a hole and bury the white parachutes, these beautiful silk parachutes, which she said she always wanted to keep, to make clothes with, but couldn't.

[Anna Sinfield]

Once they'd buried the parachute, they'd tear open the parcel that was attached to it.

[Gwen Strauss]

A lot of times it was arms, it was guns, sometimes explosives. Sometimes she said it was things like cigarettes, chocolate, you know, and also money to pay the Resistance. Then she had to make sure that everybody got away quickly because you had about 20 minutes before Gestapo or police would come to where they'd heard an airplane.

[Anna Sinfield]

And that must have been quite a dangerous thing to do because, I mean, if you're caught mid it happening, there's no. You can't deny that.

[Gwen Strauss]

Right, exactly. The life of a person in the Resistance was quite short lived. It was really hard to keep things secret. And especially the region where she was working with Germans had a sense that there was a vulnerable area. So they were definitely trying to break the Resistance and find those networks.

[Anna Sinfield]

How do you feel about your aunt doing all of this stuff?

[Gwen Strauss]

I'm super proud. I mean, I asked her, when I talked to her about it, I said, how did you, you know, why were you so brave? Like, how could you do that? And she said she didn't even think about it. Cause I had to. And I think she was appalled by how quickly France capitulated at the beginning of the war. I think a lot of young people in France felt that way. So for her, it was almost innate that you had to fight against fascism and the Nazis.

[Anna Sinfield]

My great, great uncle was a bit of a war hero. And the famous line that people quote in books and any memorials or whatever, I actually have the T, it tattooed.

[Gwen Strauss]

Oh.

[Anna Sinfield]

Really says duty called and called me to obey. And he did some crazy stuff during the First World War. And he wrote that in a letter on his deathbed to his fiance. And I think it really sums up how a lot of people who grew up in times that we can't even imagine, exactly, Faced with the horror of war, there's no choice.

[Gwen Strauss]

There's no choice. This is what you do. It's what you have to do.

[Anna Sinfield]

Yeah, yeah, completely.

[Gwen Strauss]

That's a beautiful.

[Anna Sinfield]

It's a good line.

[Gwen Strauss]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, my God.

[Anna Sinfield]

A war hero and a poet. What can you do? Helene told Gwen about the parachute drops, but that's not even a half of what she was involved in.

[Gwen Strauss]

She was also the person that was often sent around France to vet potential new Resistance people. Men. She was a beautiful woman and she could travel more easily than men. And she would go and check them out and see if they were trustworthy.

[Bowen Yang]

Wow.

[Anna Sinfield]

In her early 20s?

[Gwen Strauss]

Yeah.

[Anna Sinfield]

How did she rise to those ranks?

[Gwen Strauss]

She was scouted by a British officer who met her, and he's the one that hired her to head that section of the SOE. He only hired 11 people, so he must have thought that she was capable of it.

[Anna Sinfield]

The average time that someone lasted in the Resistance was around three to six months. Usually by then they had been arrested, possibly tortured for information, or even deported to a concentration camp. Helene managed to defy the odds and keep going for about 10 months. But then on the 4th of February, 1944, her luck ran out.

[Gwen Strauss]

She had a message that she had to give to someone named General Alard, and it was sewn in the lining of a purse that she was carrying.

[Anna Sinfield]

People actually did that?

[Gwen Strauss]

Yeah, yeah. And right when she walked into the cafe, somebody at the back of the cafe turned out it was General Allard, got up and ran out, and then she turned around, and behind her in came the police. So she just moved over and sat down as if she was coming to the cafe and acted as if she was just a normal client. And then they just basically took everybody in the cafe she was round up. And she was terrified that they would find the note in the lining of her purse. They never did. So for a few days, she felt that nothing would happen. And she was told by the Germans, oh, it's not a big deal. We just have to check your paperwork and you should be let go soon. But while she was in prison and while they were sort of checking out who was who and whose papers were in order, that's when suddenly she could feel that everything had changed towards her. And they must have broken somebody under torture or something. Somebody spoke and turned her in, because then she was suddenly taken from that jail and taken to Angers, to the prison there, where she was, I think, a couple months. And where she told me, she goes that Angers is always, for me, the symbol of suffering.

[Anna Sinfield]

The life of a prisoner at Angers was bleak.

[Gwen Strauss]

She was alone in a cell. She was handcuffed. I know that they waterboarded her. I know they pulled out her fingernails and that she would often be sent back to her cell in a stretcher. She had lifelong injuries from that time.

[Anna Sinfield]

Even in this most desperate situation, Helene found a way to stay strong.

[Gwen Strauss]

She worked out very complicated mathematical formulas on her cell wall to pass the time. She wrote the formula for me down, and I asked my sister, who's a mathematician, what the formula was about. And it's a formula that's sort of unsolved, and it's one of these enigmas in mathematics, and it's about trying to find unreal numbers. So it's this kind of interesting dilemma to be working on when you're in such a limited space of a cell. It's almost like she was trying to go to outer space with her mathematics on the walls.

[Anna Sinfield]

Helene was just 24 years old when she was arrested. Her parents, hiding in Switzerland, still thought she was a student back in Paris.

[Gwen Strauss]

She didn't want to give word to her parents because she didn't want to put them in danger. But she sent a note to a friend of her godfather's, and the guard, this German guard, sent the note for her. And so she then got a package from her mother while she was in that cell. And she said that's when she first cried, because when she saw her mother's handwriting, she just crumpled to her knees. It was real. Then, in a way, she said, once she knew that they knew, then she felt all of the suffering that she was trying to stoically keep in.

[Anna Sinfield]

I can imagine it would feel so wrong to have something like her mother's writing. This woman who's there to comfort her and is from this side of her life, which is so separate to be in such a hostile environment.

[Gwen Strauss]

Absolutely. I think that's exactly right. I think you're very astute. She doesn't belong there. The mother. Yeah.

[Anna Sinfield]

Helene is imprisoned in Angers for two months. Then on 6 June, 1944, she hears something that sounds kind of like hope. In the distance, there are explosions. D Day has arrived, and the Allies are landing on the shores of Normandy.

[Gwen Strauss]

The German guard said, you know, tomorrow I'll be a prisoner and you'll be free. But that night, they started to execute all the male prisoners in Angers. And she could hear them being executed throughout the night in the courtyard.

[Anna Sinfield]

Oh, my gosh.

[Gwen Strauss]

Thinking that at any minute it would be her turn. But instead, they put her and some of the other women in a train. So she ended up in Germany.

[Anna Sinfield]

It's clear that the Allies have the upper hand and the occupying Germans are beginning to panic. Helene is first sent to the Ravensbruck concentration camp, where she faces violent treatment and profound hunger. And then she is transported again, this time to a forced labor camp in Leipzig. Here she will meet eight women who will be the key to her survival. After the break, Meet the Nine.

[NCIS Promo Announcer]

CBS Tuesday is NCIS night with new episodes of ncis, NCIS Origins and NCIS Sydney.

[Sponsor Voice (Public/Bombas/Lifelock)]

Possible abduction of a Marines.

[Gwen Strauss]

We need to move anybody who's a potential target.

[Anna Sinfield]

We're gonna do what we do and we're gonna figure out answers.

[NCIS Promo Announcer]

Whatever they're planning, it's going down here.

[Anna Sinfield]

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[Bowen Yang]

This is Bowen Yang from Lost Culture Resource with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

[Matt Rogers]

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Because Xfinity WI fi can. And what if your wifi could fix itself before there's even really a problem? Xfinity is so reliable it does that too.

[Matt Rogers]

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[Bowen Yang]

And finally, what if your WI fi was like the smartest WI fi?

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[Bowen Yang]

Bott Xfinity is smart and reliable. You deserve the peace of mind of having WI fi that's got your back.

[Matt Rogers]

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[Sponsor Voice (Public/Bombas/Lifelock)]

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[Anna Sinfield]

Until a few months ago, Helene was a free woman, cycling her bike through the French countryside and commanding groups of resistance fighters to carry out thrilling operations. Now she was hundreds of miles away from her home at a German forced labor camp called Hassag Leipzig.

[Gwen Strauss]

They're using these women as labor. They were making Panzerfaust, which are these grenade launchers. Because she was young and strong, she along with this group of women were chosen to go work in this factory. They were on the same sort of work unit together and they became quite close and really a strong friendship and bond of helping each other out.

[Anna Sinfield]

Gwen is going to introduce you to these nine women, but don't worry, you don't need to remember all the details. I just want you to be able to picture this incredible gang of young women aged between 20 and 29. The youngest was Jose.

[Gwen Strauss]

She was Spanish and apparently very beautiful and had a gorgeous singing voice. So they all remember her singing.

[Anna Sinfield]

Then there was Renee, who used the codename Zinka.

[Gwen Strauss]

She'd gotten arrested while she was pregnant, but as soon as the baby was born, whom she named the baby France of course, very patriotic. They took the baby away from her and then she was deported. But she basically wanted to get back to France to both the country and her daughter. And she was very little and very brave. Everyone said she was the most brave amongst them.

[Anna Sinfield]

That was Zaza.

[Gwen Strauss]

Zaza's very funny, very positive, very optimistic I would say.

[Anna Sinfield]

Two of the women were Dutch, Lon

[Gwen Strauss]

and Gigi, who had come to France to join the Resistance, but they'd walked right into a trap and the very next day they were arrested by the Gestapo.

[Anna Sinfield]

There's also Minna, who sounds like great fun.

[Gwen Strauss]

Minna was this working class girl from Brittany who said she joined the resistance because she was in love with a guy she loved to be Big flirt.

[Anna Sinfield]

Jacqueline was the oldest of the group.

[Gwen Strauss]

She was 29. She was a widow. She's the one that had diphtheria, smoked like a chimney when she could, when she had cigarettes, and also swore like a sailor.

[Anna Sinfield]

Our eighth girlfriend is Nicole.

[Gwen Strauss]

She was amazing in the Resistance. First working in Lyon and almost caught by Klaus Barbie in her escape to Paris, where she was going to join another unit of the Resistance. In Paris, she was dressed as a nurse and the train got bombed and then she had to act as if she was a nurse. So just terrifying. Terrifying.

[Anna Sinfield]

And number nine is Alen, Gwen's great aunt, the chemistry, physics, maths genius who can also speak five languages. So that's the nine. Jose, Zinka, Zaza, Lon, Gigi, Mina, Jacqueline, Nicole and Alain, brave young resistance fighters from across Europe.

[Gwen Strauss]

They were all different, you know, there were different social, economic classes and different political beliefs and different, you know, different in every way. And yet they managed to be great friends. And all those kind of differences didn't matter. They were very much united in helping each other survive.

[Anna Sinfield]

I'm struck by how relatable these women sound. I could attribute big flirt, great singing voice and swears like a sailor to half of my own girl gang. That's because, of course, they were in many ways just normal girls. But they weren't in a normal situation. Their experiences at the camp were horrific. The women worked 12 hour shifts, seven days a week in the factory. Every day, each of them had to move 7 tons of iron grenade shells. They were told the motto of the camp was, whoever doesn't work, doesn't eat. But even if you did work, you were only given starvation rations, just enough to keep you alive. Disease and injury became the norm, but at least the women had each other.

[Gwen Strauss]

They were incredibly solidaire, you know, they had such solidarity with each other, like just beautiful stories. The one that I find really moving. They had a thing called the bowl of solidarity. And at night they just had two meals a day. Well, bread in the morning, and then they had like a watery soup at night. If you felt like you could, you'd take a spoonful out of your bowl and you'd put it in this other bowl. And they would decide each night who deserved that bowl the most. So whoever was at their lowest, whoever was depressed, whoever had might have heard that their child had died or their husband had died, they would give that bowl to that person. It wasn't dog eat dog at all. It was this idea that we can only survive if we help each other.

[Anna Sinfield]

That's Beautiful.

[Gwen Strauss]

It's really beautiful. And you find it in the female camps. You find it amongst the women.

[Anna Sinfield]

Yeah, it's a very nurturing form of

[Gwen Strauss]

looking out for each other as well. Yeah. And it's a form of resistance, actually. You know, I'm not gonna submit to this really violent, brutal way of being treated by treating everyone else around me equally that way. I'm gonna maintain my humanity by being generous and humane.

[Anna Sinfield]

Another way in which the women keep hold of their sanity in the camp is through remarkable creativity.

[Gwen Strauss]

A whole group of the women there with the French women were from the hat making area of Paris. Haute couture. And so there's a French tradition that's no longer celebrated, but it's a certain day of the year when unmarried women would all wear these really beautiful hats and dance. And so these women made these hats for the women who were not married, for the young girls. And they all wore them and they danced and they were.

[Anna Sinfield]

So what were they making them out of?

[Gwen Strauss]

Well, they've stolen scraps of wire or they would tear up parts of their mattress or recuperated stuff. Yeah, just incredible. And the other thing that they did, they made cookbooks, which is kind of hard to imagine, but Nicole had, and actually Gigi had one. Starving. People love to talk about food. And so they started to write down the recipes on scraps of paper and pass them around to each other in the different barracks and share these meals. And then they collected them and they made these little cookbooks which they kept hidden because they thought people wouldn't understand about it. And they would think that we were just frivolously making recipes, but it was really because they were starving.

[Anna Sinfield]

That is just like one of the most beautiful things ever.

[Gwen Strauss]

I know.

[Anna Sinfield]

Have you seen one of the cookbooks?

[Gwen Strauss]

Yeah, I've seen Gigi's cookbook. Yeah.

[Anna Sinfield]

What kind of recipes are?

[Gwen Strauss]

I mean, they're really full of sugar and butter and cream and eggs and like everything you would want if you were starving. And meat and like ladles of fat poured over noodles. Yeah.

[Anna Sinfield]

There's no grits or porridge.

[Gwen Strauss]

No, no.

[Anna Sinfield]

What's amazing is that despite everything, these women still had their fighting spirits. And none more so than Helene, because

[Gwen Strauss]

she spoke German really well. She befriended the head of the factory, this guy named Fritz Stupitz. They became quite close. I think he fell in love with her, frankly, and he hated the war and he was trying to help her escape. And he also put her in a position where she could sabotage the factory. He put her in charge of the Thermostats. And so she was able to rig the thermostats so that in the middle of tempering the shells, the ovens would turn off, and then they would turn back on at the end so they would come out red hot. But they had not been properly treated. So they would blow up in the face of the soldiers. Right. So these were really defective. And they kept getting inspected, but no one could ever believe that these starving women were capable of such sophisticated sabotage. So they were never caught.

[Anna Sinfield]

That is so cool.

[Gwen Strauss]

I mean, it's gruesome, but it's gruesome. And also, it's just. She didn't stop resisting. You know, she was fighting all the way through. And she told me that when she figured out how to sabotage the production, she felt so happy. Like, it was like she had. She was still a soldier. She wasn't just waiting to die.

[Anna Sinfield]

The Allies knew that the camp was a munitions factory, and so it was often bombed. Many women did die in these bombings, but the nine survived. And in April of 1945, their time at the camp came to a sudden end.

[Gwen Strauss]

The factory was completely bombed and no longer functional. And it was getting close to the end of the war anyway. It was snowing. It was cold. The Germans started to line everybody up in the central courtyard to start a death march, as they were doing in all the camps.

[Anna Sinfield]

Himmler had issued an order to evacuate all concentration camps. The Nazis knew they were losing. They didn't want the prisoners to fall into enemy hands and provide evidence of Nazi war crimes. The 5,000 women from Hasag Leipzig were ordered to assemble outside in the freezing night air. They were told to get in formation and march. They didn't know why or where they were going. Helene clung to her eight friends. They were determined not to get separated. After the break. Helene spots a golden opportunity.

[NCIS Promo Announcer]

CBS Tuesday is NCIS Night with new episodes of ncis, NCIS Origins, and NCIS Sydney.

[Sponsor Voice (Public/Bombas/Lifelock)]

Abduction of the Marines.

[Gwen Strauss]

We need to move anybody as a potential target.

[Anna Sinfield]

We're gonna do what we do, and we're gonna figure out answers.

[NCIS Promo Announcer]

Whatever they're planning, it's going down here.

[Anna Sinfield]

Ncis.

[NCIS Promo Announcer]

NCIS night is all new. It's a night you've never seen. CBS Tuesday, starting 8.7Central, and streaming on Paramount.

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[Anna Sinfield]

appreciate as they marched away from Leipzig, the temperatures dropped and the mud froze under their feet. Helene and the rest of the nine managed to stay close together. Along with thousands of other women, they marched all day and all night.

[Gwen Strauss]

Now at this point a lot of them are really near the end of their rope, physically. And so people were collapsing, and there were a lot of executions along the way. If you stumbled or stepped out of line, the soldiers would shoot you. There was no food, there was no water. There was sort of no plan.

[Anna Sinfield]

After 28 hours of walking, they come to a field ringed with barbed wire. They are allowed to stop here for the night. And the 9 collapse in a heap. But Alene won't rest, not yet.

[Gwen Strauss]

Helene and lan started to talk, and Lalanne basically said, look, we know they're going to kill us at the end of this or we're going to die, so we have to escape. And they made a plan that the next night they would escape together.

[Anna Sinfield]

This plan gives them something to live for. They allow themselves to hope.

[Gwen Strauss]

They were sitting in a circle and they each said what they would do if they were free.

[Anna Sinfield]

Do you know what some of them said?

[Gwen Strauss]

Helene said she would go back to school. She wanted to do more training in math. Mena said she wanted to sit with her grandmother by the sea. Jacqueline said she wanted to be in a French cafe and have a glass of wine and a cigarette, of course. Zinka said she wanted to see her daughter, France. And Lon wanted to see her brother. She would never find her brother. So they each talked about, you know, what they would do when they got free. And then they had this plan.

[Anna Sinfield]

The next day, the march begins again. The nine start trudging forward, pulled along by the anticipation of their escape that night. But their opportunity comes sooner than expected.

[Gwen Strauss]

They were walking by these large Colza fields, those yellow flowers in the spring, and this woman ran into the fields and started to eat the flowers, and nobody shot her. Whereas the day before, a woman was shot for picking up a fallen apple on the road.

[Anna Sinfield]

The march has become stretched out along the road. The guards in front and behind are suddenly out of sight.

[Gwen Strauss]

Alain notices, oh, my God, there's no one watching us. And she whispers to the person next to her, this is when we should go. And there's a little bit of back and forth. Oh, wait, we said we'd go to the. Are you sure? They're scared. But finally that it's sort of like, agreed. I think it's Zinka that says, no, we need to go now. And they slid off into the ditch along the road. And the whole time there had been these piles of corpses because people were being executed all the time. So they basically piled on top of each other like a pile of dead bodies and let the march continue past them.

[Anna Sinfield]

When the final footsteps have disappeared into the distance, the women scramble out of the ditch and run away from the road and into the fields.

[Gwen Strauss]

Then they collapse because they're so exhausted. And there's a moment then when they're catching their breath and kind of incredibly euphoric because they've escaped. Also at that moment, strangely, Nicole doesn't want to go on. She just had pneumonia, and her last bit of strength was to this escape. And she says to them, just leave me. I'm okay. At least I'll die free. This is all I wanted. And they. They won't let her. They're like, no.

[Anna Sinfield]

The nine are desperate to find a way back to France, but they are stranded in the middle of the German countryside, a landscape that is getting more volatile and dangerous by the day. The Americans are sweeping across Germany, taking over towns and cities from the Nazis and liberating concentration camps. The Soviet army is also on the ground doing the same.

[Gwen Strauss]

They were trying to get to the Americans. They didn't know where the Americans were, and they just didn't want to get caught by the Russians. The Russian soldiers were famously brutal and rapists. And obviously, you know, the Americans had this kind of mythological, you know, heroes. Heroes, right.

[Anna Sinfield]

The women get to their feet and begin walking towards a settlement that they can see in the distance.

[Gwen Strauss]

First they get to a town, and the Burgermeister comes out and he says, you've escaped. I'm gonna call the police. He yells at them. He said, like, you know, you're shameful Jewish. He's like, the police are going to come get you. And he walks away. And they're like. And they run and they run away. He thought that they would just meekly stand there.

[Anna Sinfield]

Helene knows that they need to keep their wits about them if they're going to make it to the Americans alive. But they also desperately need to rest.

[Gwen Strauss]

They couldn't really move very fast as a group. They were in such bad shape physically. They were starving. They were exhausted. They find some really kind Yugoslav prisoners who find a place for them to go in this hay barn and who bring them some food. And there's a description of them eating. They all describe this moment of eating bread and cream and confiture, like jam.

[Anna Sinfield]

Oh, I'm so glad someone gave them fat and sugar.

[Gwen Strauss]

Yeah. And Nicole remembered eating that and, like, crying and realizing that only a few hours earlier, she was ready to die. And there she's sitting in the sun, eating this. This feast. Really. Wow. Yeah.

[Anna Sinfield]

The nine needed to figure out how to survive the next Few days, they take an inventory of their meager possessions, and among them they have a needle and thread, some wire cutters, and most importantly, civilian dress. Helene had traded some food for something she could wear that wouldn't mark her out as a prisoner.

[Gwen Strauss]

Helene would wear the dress and she would go into the town. Her German was perfect, so she could pass as a German person, and she would scope it out and find somebody and ask them to help, and then they would find a place that they could sleep and maybe even a place that they could get a meal, get some information.

[Anna Sinfield]

While these stories of the Nines ingenuity and camaraderie are heartwarming, it's important not to understate the level of danger that they were in at all times.

[Gwen Strauss]

There were these roving gangs of Germans rounding up escaped prisoners and hanging them. There were people just put into barns and the barn set on fire. The last few months of the war, frenzied. A frenzied, deadly time, right?

[Anna Sinfield]

The nine are on the road for 10 days, surviving on just their wits and the kindness of strangers. Eventually, they get to the River Mold. They've been told that they will find the Americans on the other side. But there's a problem. All the bridges have been bombed. To cross the river, they have to descend a precarious ladder from the bank and scramble across wet, slimy boulders in their prison issue clogs.

[Gwen Strauss]

It was spring, so the river's really raging, and several of them couldn't swim. They almost fall in. They lose some of their really cherished possessions in the river. They've lost their shoes in the river. It's, you know, it's just crazy. Crazy.

[Anna Sinfield]

All nine women make it across the river alive and run into the nearby forest. But this final effort has pushed them to the very edge. They are wet and shivering and they are so hungry. They know that the Americans have a base in Colditz, but that's still 15 kilometers away, and that distance feels impossible.

[Gwen Strauss]

There's a point when they hit a dirt road, and three of them sit down and say they can't move. They're not getting up again. And Alain is like, you have to. We're not leaving you here. We'll give you 10 minutes and then we're going. So you have to get up. And they're looking down the road and they see a car coming. They think it's German SS coming towards them, and she's trying to get them to come, get up, get up, get up. So we can run into the woods and hide, and then she realizes that the license plate on the car is weird. It's not German. And then she realizes two American soldiers. The soldiers find them and, like, ask them if they want chewing gum. I mean, it's really cliche. They all climb into their jeep and they bring them back to the base.

[Anna Sinfield]

Did Helene tell you what she felt in that moment?

[Gwen Strauss]

She didn't. I got that from the other women's accounts about how amazing it was. I mean, Lon just apparently, according to her daughter, ever since then, her mother had a thing for men in uniform, like any American in a uniform. Her mother was just, like, the greatest thing ever. They took them into the town. They actually kicked out a German couple who were in their house and requisitioned it for the women and said, this is your house now.

[Anna Sinfield]

Wow.

[Gwen Strauss]

I know. In front of them, and the Germans were protesting. They said, no, this is what you did to them. I mean, it's a brutal time, you know, but in the house, they could take a bath, there was food. They found clothes. And they all slept in the same bed together. Cause they couldn't stand to be apart.

[Anna Sinfield]

And all of the women survived.

[Gwen Strauss]

All of them survived. Yeah.

[Anna Sinfield]

The nine had survived the months at the concentration camp, the starvation rations and lethal working conditions. They had survived the death march with its indiscriminate shootings. They had survived 10 days on the run, narrowly avoiding snipers and lynch mobs. And now here they all were. Alen, Zaza, Zinka, Lonne, Mena, Gigi, Jacqui, Nicole and Jose, tucked up together in a feather bed with American soldiers guarding the door to keep them safe. The nine had made it together. Millions of others did not. It takes a while in all the chaos of the end of the war, but eventually the women are repatriated. All but two. Jacqueline, a trained nurse, stays behind to set up a hospital for refugees too sick to travel. And Helene.

[Gwen Strauss]

Helene ended up becoming the assistant to the general. She became, like, the translator for him. She stayed behind and worked with him for several months. And to thank her, he let her use his Cadillac or Chevrolet. It was like one of these big American cars with a big star painted on it. And then she was allowed to take the car and drive back to France, where she drove to see her parents. She drove into their town, and the parents came running out and saw her drive up in this big.

[Anna Sinfield]

Oh, she's like a scene from a movie I know.

[Gwen Strauss]

And she had, like, American uniform on, the khaki thing and the. Yeah, yeah. She drove in and they. Yeah, it was quite A serious everyone

[Anna Sinfield]

must have been eyes on her.

[Gwen Strauss]

Yeah, yeah. Because actually her father had thought that she was dead. And so her mother said, you see, I said she was alive. She was alive.

[Anna Sinfield]

Well, he must have thought he was hallucinating when she arrived in that car

[Gwen Strauss]

and then that car. Yeah, yeah.

[Anna Sinfield]

When the women from the concentration camps returned home, they didn't always get the welcome they deserved.

[Gwen Strauss]

It was a very traumatic experience for the women because they didn't look like anything that they had looked like before. They were emaciated, some of them still bald. And these families were just horrified to see these women. And also, you have to understand that Paris had been liberated already for a year by the time the women get home. So there was also a kind of almost disgust with them, like, we don't need this reminder.

[Anna Sinfield]

There was also a profound double standard applied to the women who had fought in the Resistance and survived the camp. Men were commended for their bravery, but the women were treated with disdain. This is one of the reasons it took ln so long to tell her story.

[Gwen Strauss]

It was considered shameful. If you had been in the Resistance and young and survived, it meant you had slept around or been a prostitute. So it meant that you were no longer pure. That's a lot of the reason there was a lot of silence about it after the war. People didn't talk about it. They also erased the amount of work that women did in the Resistance, pretended it didn't happen.

[Anna Sinfield]

Gwen was so inspired by her great aunt's story that she decided to write an article about Helene and the rest of the Nine. But once she started researching, she realized that there was so much more to the story that she needed to know. It couldn't just be an article. It had to be a book. Gwen spent years trawling through documents, working with archivists, and traveling around Germany in order to piece it all together. And now, thanks to her thorough research, we know what happened to every single member of the Nine after their escape. We couldn't do all of their stories justice here, but Gwen's book, the Nine, will give you that all important closure and lots more amazing details from the time they spent together. By the time Gwen started writing her book, all of the women had passed away. So instead, she made contact with their family members in order to see if they knew any more information and to share some of her own discoveries. And I think the most beautiful example of this is the story of how Gwen found Zinka's baby France.

[Gwen Strauss]

That's actually one of the great experiences for me as A writer. It was really hard to figure out who Zinka was. Cause her name was Renee Le Bon, which is like there's three gazillion of them in France. Yeah. Anyway, it took a long time for me to figure out who she was.

[Anna Sinfield]

Gwen carried out some very impressive detective work and eventually tracked down a Jungian psychoanalyst living in France who she thought just might be Zinka's second child.

[Gwen Strauss]

So I emailed him and I said, I don't know if you were actually the son of this woman that I'm trying to write about, but she was known as Zinka. And I give him the whole little spiel and he goes, yes, yes, it was my mother. And do you want to talk to my sister, France? And I was like, oh, my gosh. Because this was so. Since the beginning, I had realized, like, France was born in. In the prison in 1943. So she could easily still be alive. So from the beginning, I was trying to find her. So then I emailed her, and she lives a couple hours away from me. So I drove. I know really close by. And I drove up to see her with my daughter. And there she was. And she started to cry. I started to cry. Like, we kind of fell into each other's arms, hugging and crying. And I'm gonna cry now. Anyway, I said, you wouldn't believe how long I've been looking for you. And she said, well, imagine me finding all this about my mother 70 years later. So she and I had a whole long day talking. And her experience of her mother was an abandonment. Because after the war, she was reunited with her mother. But her mother was quite ill. And so she went to different families and was taken care of by other members of the family. And whenever she would ask her mother, why did you do it? Like, why did you join the Resistance? You know, why did you leave me? Basically? And her mother said, oh, it was just for fun. It was so much fun. Her mother tried to downplay it, like all the women did. And what I was able to tell France was, your mother talked about you all the time. And you're the reason that she's still alive. Her reason to continue was you. She fought to survive because of you. And it was like kind of a. It was a gift that I could give her. And then she went up into the attic and opened up a box that she had never looked at of her mother's papers. Cause it had been too painful for her. And in that box there was an account of the escape. So she was able to kind of recover the story of her mother. And that was a great moment for me.

[Anna Sinfield]

Has it changed the way that you view yourself?

[Gwen Strauss]

Yes, absolutely. It's been a life changing experience. Weirdly positive. I just found in their story of friendship and sticking together and taking care of each other, such amazing inspiration. I don't know if I could do that. I hoped that I could, but the way that they helped each other out really moved me and made me realize, oh, there's all these different ways to resist. It's not just, you know, throwing a Molotov cocktail at something. There's many, many ways that we can fight back against fascism. And I also found in finding out these stories and sometimes bringing the stories to the families, things about their mother, aunt, sister they didn't know. That was also incredibly, I felt really honored, I guess really lucky to have been given this story by my aunt.

[Anna Sinfield]

It saddens me that these amazing, heroic women felt unable to share their stories after the war. And I'm so pleased that Gwen's written them back into history through her book. Sometimes war stories only focus on the moments that make someone a hero, which are for most of us, really quite unrelatable. But I love that through Gwen's intimate research, I can recognize my friends in these women. Of course, they were extraordinary, but at the same time, when they sat down and spoke about what they longed for, they said the sort of things I would a glass of wine and a cigarette by the sea. Bliss. It makes me feel that perhaps we've all got a bit of the nine's courage locked away in us, even if I hope we never have to use it. If you've enjoyed this conversation, you can find loads more incredible women on our feed. Do check them out. And please do spread the word and tell your friends about us. We want as many people as possible to be part of the Girlfriends gang. Next time on the Girlfriend Spotlight. Tuba stumps. The Taliban.

[Gwen Strauss]

He told me to go. The Taliban take the Herat province. Everything is under their control. I said, what, Mom? It's impossible. Our dream is finished.

[Anna Sinfield]

This season we're supporting the charity Womankind Worldwide. They do amazing work to help women's rights organizations and movements to strengthen and grow. If you'd like to find out more or donate to help them secure equal rights for women and girls across the globe, you can go to womankind.org.uk. The Girlfriend Spotlight is produced by Novel for iHeart Podcasts. For more from Novel, visit Novel Audio. The show is hosted by me, Anna Sinfield. This episode was written and produced by Maddie Hickish with production support from Al Shabani. Our assistant producer is Lucy Khan. Our researcher is Zeana Youssef. The editor is Hannah Marshall. Max o' Brien and Craig Strachan are our executive producers. Production management from Joe Savage, Cherie Houston and Charlotte Wolf. Sound design, mixing and scoring by Nicholas Alexander and Daniel Kempson. Music supervision by Jake Otyvich, Nicholas Alexander and Anna Sinfield. Original music composed by Louisa Gerst and Gemma Freeman. The series artwork was designed by Christina Lemkuhl. Willard Foxton is creative director of development. Special thanks to Katrina Norville, Carrie Lieberman and Will Pearson at iHeart Podcasts, as well as Carly Frankel and the whole team at wme. I've got you, got you.

[Gwen Strauss]

I've got you.

[NCIS Promo Announcer]

CBS Tuesday is NCIS Night with new episodes of ncis, NCIS Origins and NCIS Sydney.

[Sponsor Voice (Public/Bombas/Lifelock)]

Possible abduction of a Marines.

[Gwen Strauss]

We need to move anybody who's a potential target.

[Anna Sinfield]

We're gonna do what we do and we're gonna figure out answers.

[NCIS Promo Announcer]

Whatever they're planning, it's going down here.

[Anna Sinfield]

Ncis.

[NCIS Promo Announcer]

NCIS Night is all new. It's a night you've never seen.

[Gwen Strauss]

Everything you everything you want.

[NCIS Promo Announcer]

CBS Tuesday, starting 8, 7 Central and streaming on Paramount. Plus, are you a fraud paying American? One in four tax paying Americans has been a victim of identity fraud with Lifelock. If your identity is stolen, they fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Last year, billions in refunds were stolen. Could be from your salary, overtime or second job gone. But this year you don't need to stay a victim because this tax season fraud paying American is something no American should have to claim. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com iheart Terms apply.

[Matt Rogers]

This is Matt Rogers from Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

[Bowen Yang]

This is Bowen Yang from Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

[Matt Rogers]

Hey, so what if you could boost the WiFi to one of your devices when you need it most?

[Bowen Yang]

Because it comes Xfinity WI fi can. And what if your WI fi could fix itself before there's even really a problem? Xfinity is so reliable, it does that too.

[Matt Rogers]

What if your WI fi had parental instincts? Xfinity WI fi is part nanny, part ninja, protecting your kids while they're online.

[Bowen Yang]

And finally, what if your WI fi was like the smartest WI fi?

[Matt Rogers]

Yeah, it's WI fi that is so smart it makes everything work better together.

[Bowen Yang]

Bottom line, Xfinity is smart and reliable. You deserve the peace of mind of having WI fi that's got your back.

[Matt Rogers]

Xfinity. Imagine that.

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[Gwen Strauss]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.