Yolande Beekman Yolande Beekman ( 7 November 1911 – 13 September 1944 ) was a World War II spy . Early life . Born as Yolande Elsa Maria Unternahrer to a Swiss family in Paris . As a child , Beekman moved to London and grew up fluent in English , German , and French . Wartime service and special operations executive . When World War II broke out , she joined the Women ' s Auxiliary Air Force where she trained as a wireless operator . Because of her language skills and wireless expertise , she was recruited by the Special Operations Executive ( SOE ) for work in occupied France , officially joining the SOE on 15 February 1943 . She trained with Noor Inayat Khan and Yvonne Cormeau . In 1943 , Yolande Unternahrer married Sergeant Jaap Beekman of the Dutch army , but a short time after her marriage she said goodbye to her husband and was flown behind enemy lines in France . Beekman was landed in France on the night of 17 – 18 September 1943 , flown in a Lysander aircraft of 161 ( Special Duties ) Squadron Royal Air Force . In France , Yolande Beekman operated the wireless for Gustave Biéler , the Canadian in charge of the " Musician " Network at Saint - Quentin in the département of Aisne , using the codename " Mariette " and the alias " Yvonne " . She became an efficient and valued agent who , in addition to her all - important radio transmissions to London , took charge of the distribution of materials dropped by Allied planes . On 13 January 1944 , she and Gustave Biéler were arrested by the Gestapo while meeting at the Café Moulin Brulé . At the Gestapo headquarters in Saint - Quentin the two were tortured repeatedly but never broke . Separated from Biéler ( he was later executed ) , she was transported to Fresnes prison in Paris . Again she was interrogated and brutalized repeatedly . In May 1944 she was moved with several other captured SOE agents to the civilian prison for women at Karlsruhe in Germany , where she encountered a prisoner named Hedwig Müller ( a nurse arrested by the Gestapo in 1944 ) . Müller said after the war that Beekman " . . . didn ' t leave her cell much as she suffered badly with her legs . . . " She was confined there until September 1944 , sharing a cell with Elise Johe ( a Jehovah ' s Witness ) , Anie Hagen ( arrested for working as a black marketeer ) and Clara Frank ( jailed for slaughtering a cow on her family farm without permission ) . While imprisoned , Beekman drew and embroidered . She would take a needle and prick her finger to use the blood as ink and draw on toilet paper as there was no paper and pencils . She was abruptly transferred to Dachau concentration camp with fellow agents Madeleine Damerment , Noor Inayat Khan , and Eliane Plewman on 11 September 1944 . At dawn on 13 September , the day after their arrival in Dachau , the four young women were taken to a small courtyard next to the crematorium and forced to kneel on the ground . They were then executed by a shot through the back of the head and their bodies cremated . Awards and honours . Beekman ' s heroic actions were recognized by the government of France with the posthumous awarding of the Croix de Guerre . In addition , she is recorded on the Runnymede Memorial in Surrey , England and as one of the SOE agents who died for the liberation of France , she is listed on the " Roll of Honour " on the Valençay SOE Memorial in the town of Valençay , in the Indre département of France . Bibliography . Helm , Sarah ( May 2005 ) . A Life in Secrets : The Story of Vera Atkins and the Lost Agents of SOE . New York : Nan A . Talese . ISBN 978 - 0 - 385 - 50845 - 2 .