Adolphe Rabinovitch

Adolphe Rabinovitch (27 May 1918 – 1944) was a Special Operations Executive agent during the Second World War. He rose to the rank of captain.

Life

A Russian-Egyptian Jew, he studied in Paris before settling in the United States of America. In 1939 he volunteered in the Foreign Legion and became an SOE agent. He was first parachuted into France on 27/28 August 1942 as a radio operator for the SPINDLE network (codename Arnaud), with Peter Churchill and Odette Sansom, and managed to evade capture when that network collapsed. With Victor Hazan (codename Gervais), he got back in contact with the network's contacts around Annecy and on the Côte d’Azur before returning to England via Spain. There he became the assistant to Jean de Lattre de Tassigny before being parachuted back into France on the night of 2/3 March 1944 with Roméo Sabourin. His orders were to set up and command the BARGEE network, but the landing site was under German control and he was wounded and captured in as he landed. He was deported to Germany and executed at Gross-Rosen concentration camp in August or September 1944.^[1]

Recognition

Distinctions

• UK: Mentioned in Despatches.
• France : Croix de guerre 1939-1945 with Étoile de Vermeil.

Monuments

• His name is on the SOE memorial at Valençay, Indre, France.
• Brookwood Memorial, Surrey, panel 21, column 3.

Notes

1. ↑ Source : brochure Le Mémorial de la Section F, 1992. The SFRoH site gives 2 or 3 March.

Sources and external links

• Photograph of Adolphe Rabinovitch on the Special Forces Roll of Honour
• Michael Richard Daniell Foot, SOE in France. An account of the Work of the British Special Operations Executive in France, 1940-1944, London, Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1966, 1968 ; Whitehall History Publishing, in association with Frank Cass, 2004.