Irene Wosikowski (Woykowski)

Irene Wosikowski worked for the French resistance. She was born in Danzig in 1910, lived in Kiel and Hamburg, and became a member of a communist youth organization.

As a secretary for the Communist Party, she had to flee Germany in 1934. After time in Moscow and the Czech Republic, she moved as a newspaper correspondent to Paris, where she worked with French resistance groups.

In 1940, she was interned with other German nationals by the French authorities in a camp in Gurs, from which she fled to Marseille and continued her political work.

She was betrayed by a German informer and taken into custody on July 26, 1943. Despite severe and continued torture by the Gestapo in Marseille and later in Hamburg, she did not give up the names of her colleagues.

Irene Wosikowski was sentenced to death by the Volksgerichtshof (People’s Court) Berlin on September 13, 1944, and executed on October 27. Her body was transferred to the anatomy department at Berlin University to be studied by anatomist Professor Hermann Stieve (1886–1952).