Abstracts
Abstract
The chapter describes Madeleine Lucette Ferraille, who later changed her name to Ruth Ben David/Blau, during World War Two in France. When the war broke, Lucette was married to a handsome French soldier and gave him a son, but she wanted more out of life than was within easy reach—more, indeed, than the Vichy regime encouraged. By 1943, she was divorced, with a BA from the University of Toulouse. That year, she also helped a female Jewish refugee escape deportation and certain death. Recruited by the Resistance in early 1944, Lucette, who was beautiful as well as brilliant, made her way into the heart of the local Gestapo by becoming the mistress of a Waffen-SS officer, continuing to spy on the Nazi headquarters just a few months before D-Day.
Keywords:
- Ruth Blau,
- World War II France,
- Madeleine Lucette Ferraille,
- Resistance
Download the article in PDF to read it.
Download
Appendices
Biographical note
Motti Inbari is a Jewish studies professor at UNC Pembroke and the author of six books. His teaching and research focus encompasses Jewish history, thought, and culture, with expertise in Jewish politics and ethics, gender and sexuality, and Jewish-Christian relations. His latest book, with Kirill Bumin, is Christian Zionism in the Twenty-First Century: American Evangelical Public Opinion on Israel, published by Oxford University Press in 2024.