On August 4, 1944, a member of the French Resistance with the underground pseudonym Vicki was beheaded in the German prison Plötzensee.
Only in 1965 did the USSR learn that it was the Russian princess Vera Apollonovna Obolenskaya.
On the eve of the 20th anniversary of the Great Victory, the French government handed over to the USSR some documents related to anti-fascist activities in the Resistance by representatives of the Russian emigration. It turned out that out of 20 thousand participants in the French Resistance, about 400 people were of Russian origin. Moreover, our emigrants were the first to appeal to the French people to fight. Already in 1940, an anti-fascist group began to work in the Paris Anthropological Museum, in which young Russian scientists Boris Wilde and Anatoly Levitsky played a leading role. Their first action was the distribution of the leaflet "33 advice on how to behave towards the occupiers without losing your dignity." Further - replication, using museum technology, an open letter to Marshal Pétain, exposing him of treason. But the most prominent action was the publication of the underground newspaper Resistance on behalf of the National Committee for Public Safety. In fact, there was no such committee, but the young people hoped that the announcement of its existence would inspire Parisians to fight the occupation. "Resist!.. This is the cry of all the disobedient, all striving to fulfill their duty," the newspaper said. This text was broadcast on the BBC and was heard by many, and the name of the newspaper "Resistance", that is, "Resistance" with a capital letter, spread to all underground groups and organizations.
Vera Obolenskaya worked actively in one of these groups in Paris. In 1943, she was arrested by the Gestapo, and in August 1944 she was executed (in total, no less than 238 Russian emigrants died in the ranks of the French resistance).
By the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of November 18, 1965, Princess Obolenskaya, along with other underground émigrés, was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War of the 1st degree. But the details of her feat were not told then. Apparently, as they say now about the Soviet theme, it was an "informal".
In 1996, the publishing house “Russkiy Put” published a book by Lyudmila Obolenskaya-Flam (a relative of the princess) “Vicky - Princess Vera Obolenskaya”. We learned a lot from it for the first time.
The future French underground worker was born on July 11, 1911 in the family of the vice-governor of Baku, Apollon Apollonovich Makarov. At the age of 9, she and her parents left for Paris. There she received her secondary education, then worked as a model in a fashion salon. In 1937, Vera married Prince Nikolai Alexandrovich Obolensky. They lived in a Parisian fashion, cheerful and fashionable. Only one thing darkened the mood - the absence of children. But the outbreak of the Second World War showed that this is probably for the best. Because from the first days of the occupation, the Obolenskys joined the underground struggle.
Prince Kirill Makinsky later recalled how it was. He was a volunteer in the French army. Immediately after her surrender, he returned to Paris and first of all went to his friends Obolensky. On the same evening, Vicki turned to him with the words: "We will continue, right?" According to Makinsky, “the decision was made without hesitation, without a doubt. She could not admit the thought that the occupation would last for a long time; for her it was a passing episode in history; it was necessary to fight against the occupation, and the more rigorously the struggle became, the more difficult the struggle became”.
Vera was attracted directly to the underground organization by her friend's husband, Jacques Arthuis. Soon she, in turn, attracted Kirill Makinsky, Nikolai's husband and her Russian friend Sophia Nosovich, whose brother died in the ranks of the 22nd Infantry Regiment of foreign volunteers, to participate in the struggle. The organization founded by Arthuis was named Organization Civile et Militaire (OCM - Civil and Military Organization). The name is explained by the fact that there were two directions in the organization: one was engaged in preparations for a general military uprising, the other, under the leadership of Maxim Blok-Mascar, vice-chairman of the Confederation of Knowledge Workers, was engaged in the problems of the post-war development of France. At the same time, the OSM paid great attention to obtaining classified information and transferring it to London.
By 1942, the OCM had thousands of members in all departments of the occupied part of France, becoming one of the largest organizations of the Resistance. It included many industrialists, high-ranking officials, employees of the railways, post office, telegraph, agriculture, labor and even internal affairs and the police. This made it possible to receive information about German orders and deliveries, about the movement of troops, about trains with forcibly recruited by the French for work in Germany. A large amount of this information went to the headquarters of the OSM, fell into the hands of its secretary general, that is, Vika Obolenskaya, and from there it was transmitted to London in various ways, first through Switzerland or by sea, and later by radio. Vicki constantly met with liaisons and with representatives of underground groups, gave them leadership assignments, received reports, and conducted extensive secret correspondence. She copied the reports received from the places, compiled summaries, duplicated orders and made copies of secret documents obtained from the occupation institutions, and from plans for military installations.
Vika's assistant in sorting and typing classified information was her friend Sofka, Sofya Vladimirovna Nosovich. Nikolai Obolensky also contributed. All three knew German. Thanks to this, Nikolai, on behalf of the organization, got a job as a translator at the construction of the so-called "Atlantic Wall". According to the plan of the Germans, the rampart was to become an impregnable defensive fortification along the entire western coast of France. Thousands of Soviet prisoners were brought there to work, and they were kept in appalling conditions. They died, Obolensky recalled, "like flies." If anyone dared to steal potatoes in the fields, he was immediately shot. And when for the construction of structures it was necessary to mine rocks, the forced laborers were not even warned about this, "the poor fellows perished mutilated." Obolensky was assigned to the detachments of the workers, so that he translated the orders of the German authorities to them. But from the workers, he received detailed information about the facilities at which they worked. The information he collected was sent to Paris, from there - to the headquarters of General de Gaulle's "Free French". This information turned out to be extremely valuable in the preparation of the landing of the allied forces in Normandy.
For a long time, the Gestapo did not suspect the existence of the OCM. But already at the end of 1942, Jacques Arthuis was arrested. Instead, the organization was headed by Colonel Alfred Tuni. Vicki, who was aware of all of Arthuis's affairs, became Tune's right-hand man.
On October 21, 1943, during a raid, one of the leaders of the OCM, Roland Farjon, was accidentally arrested, in whose pocket they found a receipt for a paid telephone bill with the address of his safe apartment. During a search of the apartment, weapons, ammunition, addresses of secret mailboxes in different cities, schemes of military and intelligence units, the names of the members of the organization and their conspiratorial nicknames were found. Vera Obolenskaya, general secretary of the OSM, lieutenant of the military forces of the Resistance, appeared under the pseudonym “Vicki”.
Soon Vicki was captured and, along with some other members of the organization, was taken to the Gestapo. According to one of them, Vicki was exhausted by the daily interrogations, but she did not betray anyone. On the contrary, without denying her own belonging to the OCM, she fended off many, claiming that she did not know these people at all. For this she received the nickname "Princess I Know Nothing" from German investigators. There is evidence of such an episode: the investigator, with feigned bewilderment, asked her how Russian émigrés could resist Germany, which is fighting against communism. “Listen, madam, help us better fight our common enemy in the East,” he suggested. “The goal you are pursuing in Russia,” objected Vicki, “is the destruction of the country and the destruction of the Slavic race. I am Russian, but I grew up in France and spent my whole life here. I will not betray my homeland or the country that sheltered me."
Vicki and her friend Sofka Nosovich were sentenced to death and transported to Berlin. A member of the OCM, Jacqueline Ramey, was also taken there, thanks to which evidence of the last weeks of Vicki's life was preserved. Until the very end, she tried to morally support her friends during rare meetings on walks, through tapping and using people like the jailer-servant. Jacqueline was present when Vicki was called during the walk. She never returned to her cell.
Jacqueline and Sofka were miraculously saved. They did not have time to execute them - the war was over.
For a time it was believed that Vicki was shot. Subsequently, information was received from the Plötzensee prison (today it is a Museum-monument of resistance to Nazism). There they executed by hanging or guillotine especially dangerous opponents of the Nazi regime, including the generals who took part in the failed assassination attempt on Hitler on June 20, 1944. Opposite the entrance to this terrible room with two vaulted windows, along the wall, there are six hooks for the simultaneous execution of state criminals, and in the center of the room a guillotine was installed, which is no longer there, there was only a hole in the floor for blood drainage. But when Soviet soldiers entered the prison, there was not only a guillotine, but also an iron basket into which the head fell.
The following was found out. It was just a few minutes before one in the afternoon when on August 4, 1944, two guards led Vicki there with her hands tied behind her back. At exactly one o'clock, the death sentence passed by the military tribunal was carried out. From the moment she lay down on the guillotine, it took no more than 18 seconds to cut off the head. It is known that the name of the executioner was Röttger. For each head he was entitled to 80 Reichsmarks premium, his handy - eight cigarettes. Vicki's body, like the others executed, was taken to the anatomical theater. Where it went later is unknown. At the Parisian cemetery of Sainte-Genevieve there is a slab - the conditional tombstone of Princess Vera Apollonovna Obolenskaya, but her ashes are not there. This is the place of her commemoration, where there are always fresh flowers.
What an important example Princess Vera Obolenskaya sends from the distant past to us today, half of whom are ready to bury Soviet Russia and everything connected with it, and the other half cannot stand modern democracy, as if it were unaware that regimes of power come and go, and the Motherland, the people, the country remain in invariable sanctity for a real citizen and patriot, and not an adherent of a single ideology, no matter how attractive it may be.
