Family Group Sheet
Family Group Sheet
NameHélène ‘Elaine’ (Marinos) Vagliano LdH (Chevalier). CdG (Palme) MdlR +, 7C3R
Birth1909, Paris, France
Death15 Aug 1944, Near Nice, France
MemoMurdered by the Gestapo, along with 23 other Résistants. Maureen Emerson writes: “On the 15 August, from her cell, Hélène heard a voice calling out in the street that the Allies had landed along the coast at Frejus. Overjoyed, she exclaimed to her cell companion, who later relayed it to Hélène's mother, that now France was liberated nothing else mattered and her work was done: 'mon petit morceau est fini'. During the course of the same afternoon, on a Riviera bombarded day and night by Allied planes, Hélène and twenty-three other prisoners were collected together and driven in the direction of the Ariane quarter behind Nice. The road to their destination was called the Chemin de la Croix - the Path of the Cross. - -On a piece of land in front of a sheer rock face and bordered by a small river, the group was lined up to face the water. Watched with horror from behind closed shutters by a local farmer and his daughter, the Germans set up their machine guns across the river from the prisoners. All twenty-four died that day. On Hélène's right fell a priest who had been arrested for burying two Resistants shot by the Gestapo. On her left, a young blonde girl who had acted as nurse to the Maquis. Further down was Commandant de Lattre de Tassigny, a retired cousin of the General de Lattre who would lead the French forces from the beaches of the Riviera to victory in Berlin. The Commander's son had joined the Resistance and his father had been taken as hostage. The son had already been captured and shot two days previously. Lying beside Hélène was a little basket, which her mother had managed to get to her, containing a piece of bread and a pear. It was her lunch, for she had thought she was being taken to another prison to be interrogated.”
Residencebef 1924, The Grange, Ascot, Windsor, England
Residence1924, Villa Champfleuri, Californie, Cannes, France
EducationSt George’s School, Ascot (1923-27)
Note 1Tortured by the Gestapo in Nice for her WWll Resistance activities, her parents were required to listen from a room next door and then to see her broken body dragged across the prison yard. She was later shot by the Germans on a hillside outside Nice.
Note 1She hid and transported messages hidden in the hollow tubes of her brother Stephen’s wheel chair for Resistance groups in the Nice area.
Note 2She settled in Cannes in 1927, following her parents who had returned there in 1923. Thanks to historian Maureen Emerson “... Hélène’s life has been accepted by the Imperial War Museum so she is now, at last, included in their records”.
Note 3Maureen Emerson reports that she bought herself a speed-boat ('it's tremendously thrilling, especially turning corners'), skied and mountaineered with her brother which 'gave the guide many white hairs', and that she trained tortoises.
Note 4Maureen Emerson says she translated articles into braille for the blind and was involved in the scouts and brownie packs in Cannes.
Note 5By 1941 Hélène had become the local organiser for the Social Services Department of the Maison du Prisonnier in Cannes and financing meals for hungry children
Flags***, Giustiniani Pi, Mavrogordato, Maximo, Petrocochino, Ralli (Chaviara), Ralli (Pitsis), Ralli (Spechlis), Scanavi, Scaramanga, Sechiari, Vagliano
FatherMarinos (Athanasios) Vagliano (1882-1959)
MotherDanäe (Basil) Vagliano (1886-1958)
Unmarried