“Dachau: Assistant Section Officer Noor Inayat-Khan (b.1914), WAAF, also known as the SOE agent Madelaine is executed at Dachau concentration camp. She had done highly risky work as an agent in France, and told the Nazis nothing after her betrayal.”
Caught my curiosity, so I followed up on Wikipedia - she appears to have been quite a remarkable woman: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noor_Inayat_Khan
It’s amazing how many ordinary people we’ve probably never heard of made incredible contributions and exhibited unbelievable heroism during that war.
And in contrast to the venal and incompetent clowns we have at all levels in this administration, it’s also somewhat depressing.
The rise of television has made American political life highly attractive - even addictive - to narcissistic sociopaths, and made it equally abhorrent and repellent to normal Americans. I'm not sure what the fix is, short of candidate debates with everyone wearing a bag over their heads.
On second thought, maybe that should be a requirement to hold office - kind of a reverse "Man in the Iron Mask" thing. You don't get to know what the office-holder looks or sounds like, or what racial or socio-economic sub-group he is pandering to - and can thus only judge the individual by his actions. :)
"I wish some Indians would win high military distinction in this war. If one or two could do something in the Allied service which was very brave and which everybody admired it would help to make a bridge between the English people and the Indians."
Remarkable background too - Indian Sufi father, American mother, born in prerevolutionary Moscow.