Violette Szabo Museum marks 80 years since her arrest

Special Operations Executive field operative Violette Szabo was executed at Ravensbruck concentration camp aged just 23 alongside her colleagues Lillian Rolfe and Denise Bloch in 1945.

The event took place at the Violette Szabo Museum. (Image: Rosemary Rigby)

They had been incarcerated since their capture by the Second SS Panzer Division while on a mission in Limoges in June 1944.

After interrogation by the SS in Paris, they were deported to Saarbrucken transit camp in Germany, before being moved on to Ravensbruck and Torgau concentration camps.

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They were later returned to Ravensbruck, where they were placed in solitary confinement and later shot, while a fellow SOE agent, Cecily Lefort, was put to death in the gas chambers.

Buglers at 2024's Bastille Day event (Image: Rosemary Rigby)

Violette was posthumously awarded the George Cross and the Croix-de-Guerre and her memory lives on in Herefordshire at Cartref, in Wormelow, where she would spend her holidays with family.

The cottage on Tump Lane is now home to a museum dedicated to the WW2 heroine, carefully curated by owner Rosemary Rigby.

The beautiful Violette Szabo cake from the day (Image: Rosemary Rigby)

Ms Rigby’s museum remains the venue for the annual celebration of Violette’s life on Bastille Day, the day she met her future husband, Etienne, in 1940. This year’s event was held on July 7, with performances by Herefordshire buglers at the museum.

Ms Rigby was very proud of the event’s incredible centrepiece, a beautiful cake of Violette stole the show, while cupcakes with violets on top proved a very nice touch.