- Jack Agazarian
Jack Charles Stanmore Agazarian (
December 19 ,1916 –March 29 ,1945 ) was a British espionage agent who worked for theSpecial Operations Executive (SOE) insideFrance . He was captured and killed by the Nazis when he sought to confirm the status of a resistance cell that the Nazis had compromised.Agazarian was born in
London , to anArmenia n father and French mother. He was educated in bothFrance andEngland . After joining theRoyal Air Force at the outbreak ofWorld War II , he was recruited as a wireless operator by the SOE.In December 1942 Agazarian arrived in
Paris to join the newly formed Prosper network of the SOE and was joined later by his wife Francine. He occasionally worked forHenri Dericourt , a former French Air Force pilot whose job was to find landing grounds and arrange receptions for SOE agents arriving by air. At this time he began to question Dericourt's loyalty and reported to London his own and other agents' suspicions.Agazarian became known to the
Gestapo , and on several occasions he narrowly escaped arrest.SOE Circuit leader
Francis Suttill considered Agazarian's continued presence to be a security risk. On June 16, 1943 Agazarian was returned toEngland where he reiterated his concerns about Dericourt's loyalty toNicholas Bodington andMaurice Buckmaster , who were nevertheless unconvinced. However, when agentNoor Inyat Khan lost contact with the Prosper group, headquarters became increasingly concerned.Leo Marks , the SOE's head of codes and ciphers, became convinced thatGilbert Norman , the group's wireless operator, was transmitting under German control.Agazarian joined Bodington (who was still sceptical) in a mission to France to determine the status of the Prosper network, departing July 22, 1943. Bodington, working through headquarters, arranged a meeting with Gilbert Norman at a pre-arranged address in the rue de Rome near
Gare St-Lazare , but it was Agazarian, not Bodington who went to the meeting.The concerns about the Prosper network proved well-founded. German forces had indeed compromised the network, and Agazarian was taken prisoner at the meeting. Three members of the network, courier
Andrée Borrel , leaderFrancis Suttill and wireless operatorGilbert Norman , had been in custody since June 23, and Norman's transmissions had indeed been made by the Germans. Henri Dericourt's role in the loss of the Prosper network remains unclear; after the war he was tried as a double agent, but acquitted for lack of evidence.The arrest of Agazarian, who knew a great deal about the Prosper network, was a massive coup for the Germans. He endured torture for six months at
Fresnes prison and was then moved toFlossenbürg concentration camp . After being kept there in solitary confinement, Agazarian was executed on March 29, 1945.Jack Agazarian is honored on the
Runnymede Memorial inSurrey, England , on the SOE memorial at Flossenbürg and also on the Roll of Honor on theValençay SOE Memorial inValençay , in theIndre département of France
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