Noor Inayat Khan Bust- SOE
Details:
In the northern east side corner of Gordon Square Garden.
Monument
A bronze bust on a gray pedestal inscribed with a brief history of Noor being a Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent during World War II. The Noor Memorial Trust led a two-year campaign to erect this memorial and chose the sculptress Karen Newman to create it. It was unveiled by the Princess Royal in 2012, close to Khan's childhood home in Taviton Street near Gordon Square and where she returned while training for the SOE during World War II. It was the first freestanding memorial in the UK to honor a woman of Asian background.
Noor-un-Nisa Inayat Khan was born in Moscow to an Indian-Sufi father and an American mother. Several months later, the family moved to London and settled in Bloomsbury. In 1920, they relocated to France, where Khan studied child psychology and music; she became a writer, publishing poetry and children’s stories in French and English.
Following the outbreak of WWII, the family returned to England. Though Khan was a pacifist and supporter of Indian independence, she wanted to contribute to the war effort, so in November 1940, she joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) and trained as a radio operator. Later, the F (France) Section of the SOE recruited her and sent her to France as part of a sabotage force in February 1943, the first woman to serve as an undercover radio operator in occupied Europe.
In June, the Gestapo began to hunt down her unit, and within a few months, she was among the few operators still working. On October 13th, 1943, Khan was captured, and during the 11 months of her imprisonment and frequent questioning and torturing, she refused to hand over information. Eventually, she was sent to the Dachau camp, where she was shot dead on September 12th, 1944. She was 30 years old. In 1949, Noor was posthumously awarded the George Cross for her heroism and resilience during the war.
Source of information: www.wanderwomenproject.com, www.londonist.com
Source of photos: www.google.com/maps
Monument Text:
On the front side of the pedestal:
NOOR
INAYAT KHAN
1914-1944
G.C., M.B.E.
Croix de Guerre
Unveiled by
HRH The Princess Royal
on 8 November 2012
On the left side of the pedestal:
Noor Inayat Khan
was an SOE agent
infiltrated into
occupied France.
She was executed
at Dachau
Concentration Camp.
Her last word was
" LIBERTE"
On the right side of the pedestal:
Noor lived nearby
and spent
some quiet time
in this garden
On the rear side of the pedestal:
The Special Operations
Executive (SOE)
was a secret
organisation set up
by Winston Churchill
to help
Resistance movements
during WWII
