Escape and evasion lines (World War II)

rdf:langString Escape and evasion lines (World War II)

rdf:langString right

rdf:langString Our lives are going to depend on a schoolgirl.

rdf:langString My name is Andrée...but I would like you to call me by my code name, which is Dédée, which means little mother. From here on I will be your little mother, and you will be my little children. It will be my job to get my children to Spain and freedom.

rdf:langString If an evader found himself in touch with an escape line he must obey every order from it, as promptly and as officially as he had obeyed orders from his previous commanding officer.

rdf:langString During the Second World War citizens in the occupied countries of Europe were not free to move about without identification cards and travel permits. Nazi patrols stopped, and searched citizens without warning or reason. Controls on travel and the frequent patrols made it extremely dangerous to move allied evaders from place to place because there was always a possibility that they would be stopped. If arrested, an evader was interrogated, sometimes tortured and sent to a POW camp. The guide/helper, however, was interrogated, often tortured, imprisoned in a concentration camp, or executed and her or his family and friends were at great risk.

rdf:langString A downed airman, referring to Andrée de Jongh

rdf:langString Escape and evasion lines in World War II helped people escape European countries occupied by Nazi Germany. The focus of most escape lines in Western Europe was assisting British and American airmen shot down over occupied Europe to evade capture and escape to neutral Spain or Sweden from where they could return to the United Kingdom. A distinction is sometimes made between "escapers" (soldiers and airmen who had been captured by the Germans and escaped) and "evaders" (soldiers and airmen in enemy territory who evaded capture). Most of those helped by escape lines were evaders. Some escape and evasion lines such as the Shelbourne or Burgundy Lines were created by the Allies specifically to assist their soldiers and airmen stranded in German-occupied territory. Others were the product of a combination of allied military personnel and local citizens in occupied territory, such as the Pat O'Leary Line. Some escape lines were created and operated by civilians as grass-roots efforts to help people fleeing the Nazis, such as Comet, Dutch-Paris, Service EVA or the Smit-van der Heijden line, and did not restrict themselves to helping military personnel but also helped compromised spies, resisters, men evading the forced labor drafts, civilians who wanted to join the governments-in-exile in London, and Jews. About 7,000 airmen and soldiers, mostly British and American, were helped to evade German capture in Western Europe and successfully returned to the United Kingdom during World War II. Many of the escape lines were financed in whole or part by MI9 of the British Directorate of Military Intelligence and other Allied organizations. "Participation in the escape networks was arguably the most dangerous form of resistance work in occupied Europe...The most perilous job of all was handled mostly by young women, many of them still in their teens, who escorted the servicemen hundreds of miles across enemy territory to Spain."