Like Mother, Like Daughter
This week I focused my search for an important woman of non-violent resistance on the Danish Resistance since this was the topic of one of the assigned chapters this week. I typed in "important women Danish Resistance" into Google and found a link to "Women in Intelligence" as part of an online bibliography of a Muskingum College project.
Listed under "Other Resistance" is Monica: Heroine of the Danish Resistance by Christine Sutherland, published in 1990. So I surfed the book’s title and then on other pieces of information gleaned from hits about the book.
Monica was Massy-Beresford de Wichfeld. The majority of the information I could find about Monica was related to the book. The following is from Biblio.Com which quotes the dust jacket from the book:
An English Beauty of high social standing and incredible courage, Monica Massy-Beresford became the heroine of the Danish Resistance during World War II. Condemned to death by the Nazis, she died in Germany a few months before the war’s end. Her glamorous and fashionable life was an unusual preparation for her heroic wartime role.
Born in London, Monica spent her youth in Ireland. The loss of her favorite brother in 1918 inspired a lifelong hatred of Germans. Having married a Danish aristocrat, Jorgen de Wichfeld, heir to an estate in Lolland, she discovered the family was in financial trouble after their first two children were born. When she turned for help to their neighbor and Jorgen’s friend, Kurt von Reventlow, they became lovers. The Wichfelds moved to Italy to live with Monica’s widowed mother in her Rapallo villa, and Kurt followed.
Monica, now the family bread- winner, started a costume-jewelry and perfume business in Paris. Despite Kurt’s plea, she would not abandon her family, so he left and later married Barbara Hutton. As neutral Danes, the Wichfelds had to return to Lolland at the outbreak of war.
When the Nazi occupation grew harsher, Monica (without her husband’s knowledge) joined the Resistance. She harbored RAF paratroopers and other refugees in their large house and rowed explosives across the lake at dead of night. Her daughter, Inkie, who secretly helped her, later married the Resistance leader. Monica’s effective support of the underground, her impressive deportment at her trial, and her example to fellow prisoners made her a national heroine. When the Nazis transported her to Germany, her end was inevitable.
A slightly different search on Monica’s name produced a TimesOnline article from January 9, 2003 about the death of Monica’s daughter, Varinka Wichfeld-Muus. The article says that Monica "worked closely with Free Denmark and Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE) in sabotage activities before being arrested by the Germans in 1944 and sentenced to death for refusing to leak information about her involvement in the Resistance and her contacts. Monica Wichfeld’s sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, but she died of tuberculosis in prison in Waldheim, Germany, in February 1945, aged only 50."
That article goes on to tell how Varinka "helped her mother with arms pickups, hiding and feeding wanted persons, running errands and becoming a resistance leader in her own right, before joining the legendary Flemming Muus as secretary — and wife after a secret wedding — in Copenhagen in 1944 at the height of the Danish resistance effort against Germany."
"Varinka spent much of her time and energy at the tail end of the war and in the ensuing years defending her husband against allegations of embezzling SOE and other funds entrusted to him in his capacity of Danish resistance leader."
"Varinka’s memoirs Fra Solskin til Tusmoerke (From Sunshine to Twilight) were published in 1994.
Varinka Wichfeld-Muus was born in Saxkøbing, Denmark, on February 9, 1922. She died of cancer in Copenhagen on December 18, 2002, aged 80."
