The stories of the Irish women who played a role in the French Resistance of World War II

The French Resistance to Nazi occupation during World War II was a force of ordinary men and women fighting for freedom at great risk.

Numbering about 500,000 people, working in small cells, it carried out acts of sabotage, intelligence gathering, and aided Jews and Allied escapees during the German occupation. More than 90,000 resisters were killed, tortured or deported by the Nazi.

Now British prime minister has said he will make 2025 the year to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. He wants to honour - and take inspiration from - the greatest generation that achieved peace in Europe.

READ MORE: What living in Ireland during WWII would have looked like - new book brings wartime life to colour

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But Ireland also had a part in this story. Until now, it has remained largely untold. However a book on our role in the resistance - The Irish in the Resistance by Clodagh Finn and John Morgan- now chronicles it.

The stories of the women involved are particularly fascinating. Here we take a look at some of the Irish women whose clandestine activities were largely forgotten until now.

It includes operatives like Mary O’Shaughnessy, whose War Crimes trial testimony exposed the shocking barbarism of Nazi rule; the fascinating performer Agnes Bernelle and Margaret Kelly, who founded the famous “Bluebell” girls dance troupe.

Mary O’Shaughnessy

The testimony of ‘Irish Governess’, Mary O’Shaughnessy at the 1946 Nazi War Crimes trials was so shocking and revealing, it made headlines worldwide.

Taking the witness stand in Hamburg, O’Shaughnessy’s voice faltered at first but she was thorough in outlining the torture, the murdered, the daily cruelties, the depravity.

There was the female SS guard who smashed her teeth, sisters Germaine and Madeleine Tambor who when one was being taken away to be gassed, the other ran across to join her. Mary O’Shaugnessy was born in 1898 to an Irish immigrant family, to mother Mary Snr and coal miner father Dennis.

Life was difficult for a young girl born with a deformed arm, one shorter than the other, and who in later years would be fitted with a prosthetic.

Mary O'Shaughnessy in Kenya

She was working as a governess to three children in Angers when war broke out, a position she was able to keep because of her Irish passport.

And she began by using visits to Allied prisoners in the town’s hospital, helping them transition from initial escape to spiriting them away to Allied escape lines.

Mary was betrayed and arrested in Lyon on 14 March, 1944, and tortured mercilessly - the Gestapo fervently believed speed of interrogation key to rolling up resistance networks.

She was alternatively doused in water near boiling-point and plunged into ice-cold water 13 times, she testified, refusing to name her fellow resistants - afterwards being transferred to Ravensbruck, the largest women's concentration camp ever constructed, where 130,00 passed through its gates and an estimated 50-70,000 perished.

Agnes Bernelle

Agnes was the daughter of a Jewish-Hungarian theatre impresario and from a displaced family who had turned up in Britain in 1933.

In 1939, aged 20, she was working as a radio announcer for two specific allied propaganda stations Atlantiksenderwest and Soldatensender Calais, which broadcast from a studio near Woburn Abbey in Buckinghamshire.

Her given name was Vicky - and she even had a seductive jingle: “This is Vicky with three kisses for you, Mwah, Mwah, Mwah”.

The programme deliberately featured jazz and swing music, forbidden on official German channels, interspersed with items of fake news, one of which would live on as a much celebrated Allied prank of World War Two.

Vicky told German citizens of the need to put anonymous samples of their urine into small bottles and send them to the Minister of Health in Berlin for Aryan health checks. It was convincing enough to be believed, they sent, clogging up the German postal service for weeks.

Agnes Bernelle

Post-war, she married Irish-born Spitfire pilot Desmond Leslie and while the marriage would implode in 1964, she lived out her life in Dublin with her three children, including the writer/journalist Antonia Leslie.

Latterly creative director at the Projects Arts Theatre in Dublin, she was known for her cabaret shows, and also sang with acts such as Elvis Costello, Tom Waits, Marc Almond, Marianne Faithfull, Irish punk rockers The Radiators and avant-garde artist Gavin Friday.

Agnes Bernelle died in February 1999.

Maureen O’Sullivan

Dublin-born Maureen was the ultimate Special Operations Executive action girl, who spent seven month stints at a time as a wireless operative.

On her arrival, the leader of the network contacted London to complain they had sent him a ‘girl’. But she turned out so good, he ended up later refusing two men as her replacement.

Maureen was a chain-smoker who at first could not set up an aerial, change a fuse or ride a bicycle. But she was a fast learner.

Maureen O’Sullivan post D-Day group photo

Running seven wireless transmitters at a time, she turned out to be a natural. She famously pressed the plunger to blow up a train, and dodged identification when there was a Wanted poster with her image reading: The Enemy’s Most Dangerous Spy - We Must Find and Destroy Her.

The leader of the network later wrote: “Due to her patience, natural intelligence, hard work and willingness to learn, she improved rapidly and after a couple of months became a first-class operator who could be entirely trusted to carry out her job thoroughly, and all credit for that is entirely due to herself. “

Janie McCarthy

Kerry-born Janie was a member of five different resistance groups at various times, including the Comet and Shelburn Lines. Her flat on Rue Saint Anne where she gave French lessons was deemed too small to hide escapees.

However a vivacious smart dresser, able to think quickly and talk herself out of trouble, she was noted as looking after ‘supplies, conveying, interpreting and liaising’ and was London’s contact when it came to sharing information regarding downed service personnel.

It was her interrogation which would establish people were just who they said they were. Following Shelburn’s betrayal in November 1943, Janine was forced into hiding. But it didn’t prevent her continuing her clandestine work.

A plaque commemorating Janine McCarthy’s heroism, unveiled in 2022, is on Mission Street in Killarne

Known as Miss Mac, she was awarded the French Croix de Guerre, a Tedder certificate for helping British Service personnel and an American Medal of Freedom.

Indeed, a list of 100 people who ‘left Kerry and achieved distinction’ published in 1954 by The Kerryman newspaper featured just this one woman. A plaque commemorating Janine McCarthy’s heroism, unveiled in 2022, is on Mission Street in Killarney.

Margaret Kelly

One the most glamorous women in Irish history, Folies Bergere dancer Margaret Kelly - born in Dublin’s Rotunda Hospital - had founded the fabulous Bluebell Girls troupe and already ‘lived a full life’ before her activities as a resistance.

Margaret married pianist conductor Marcel Leibovici - who wrote songs for Edith Piaf - in March 1939 and disbanded the Bluebells at the start of the war.

When the Gestapo called on December 1, she thought they had come for her husband. Not so - she was the target and, leaving her infant behind and five months pregnant, she was interned at Frontstalag 142 near the Swiss border.

The Irish In The Resistance book

A self-styled self-appointed consul Count O’Kelly - a wine seller from Tipperary - secured her release in late December 1940. Jewish Marcel was arrested in late 1941, but later escpaed from captivity where Margaret hid him in another part of the city.

Kelly’s character is played by Catherine Deneuve in Francois Trauffaul’s film The Last Metro (1980), the title a reference to the late night post-theatre train.

Catherine Crean

Catherine Crean was born on Moore street, Dublin, to engine fitter John Crean and wife Ellen and her war-time resistance history is not that dissimilar to Mary O’Shaugnessy’s.

Both were Irish governesses, both betrayed, and both ended up at Ravensbruck.

However while O’Shaughnessy survived the concentration camp, Catherine - who had just entered her sixties at the time war broke out and had been part of the remarkable Belgian 5,000-strong Marc network - died.

A 1985 reproduction of a photograph showing female prisoners at the Ravensbruck concentration camp near Fuerstenberg.

Arrested in late August 1942, she succumbed to dysentery on April 5, 1945. This was just 25 days before the camp was liberated.

Fellow Marc resistante Andree Dumon recalled how, that February, Catherine had called out to her: “She had no strength left and all she wanted was for me to comb her hair.

“She handed me her comb and to my dismay I found that I could no longer hold the comb properly in my hand. Nevertheless, I strived to do my best to comb her hair as well as possible.”

The Irish In The Resistance by Clodagh Finn and John Morgan, is out now published by Gill priced €19.99.

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