Born: Unknown, France (assumed)
Died: 1996
Country most active: France
Also known as: Unknown
Gaby Bloch was a French Resistance fighter during the Nazi occupation of her country during World War II. She worked with her husband, Jean-Pierre Bloch, to arrange some of the earliest deliveries of agents, weapons and equipment from the UK, where Free French leader Charles de Gaulle was in exile. The couple and other resistants were arrested in October 1941 for “treason.” After Gaby was released following three months in prison, she worked with American Special Operations Executive agent Virginia Hall to organize a prison break of the men still held captive at Mauzac internment camp, run by the Vichy government. Travelling 35 miles three times a week, she risked her own life bribing guards and smuggling in messages and tools over the course of months, with a dozen prisoners, including Jean-Pierre, successfully escaping in July 1942. M.R.D. Foot, the official SOE historian, described the Mauzac prison break as “one of the war’s most useful operations of the kind.” The escapees eventually made their way to London, and the SOE arranged for Gaby and her children to rejoin her husband there, where the couple continued their resistance work. Both received the Legion d’honneur, with Gaby being recommended for the King’s Medal for Courage in the Cause of Freedom. Little information is publicly available about her life.