Giliana Balmaceda
Giliana Balmaceda - date and photographer unknown
Born29 September 1910[1]
Chile
Other namesGiliana Gerson
Occupation(s)actress and spy
EmployerSpecial Operations Executive
Known forfirst SOE female agent into France
SpouseVictor Gerson

Giliana Balmaceda became Giliana Gerson (born 1910) was a Special Operations Executive agent during the Second World War. She was the first female SOE agent to be sent to occupied France.[2]

Life

Balmaceda was born in Chile in 1910.[3] She had worked as an actress in Paris, where she met Englishman, Victor Gerson, a dealer in fine rugs and carpets, whom she married.[2]

On 18 June 1940, at the signing of the armistice, the couple escaped to England, where both joined the Special Operations Executive.[4] Her husband, Victor Gerson, proposed setting up a line of helpers to simplify the exit and entrance of SOE agents, and Balmaceda volunteered to reconnoitre the possibility.[5] In May 1941 she became the first female SOE agent to be sent to France.[6] She proved adept at distinguishing between those who genuinely wanted to help escapees and those who claimed loyalty to the allies even though they were informing the counterintelligence police.[5]

Balmaceda, ostensibly on holiday, travelled freely on her Chilean passport in Vichy France, not yet occupied by Nazi Germany, and compiled a long list of names and addresses of those willing to help and who she believed could be trusted.[7] She preferred to find older couples who were usually at home and who were willing to provide a spare bedroom for the cause. During her three weeks in Vichy France she collected "information about timetables, curfews, the papers civilians had to carry, and the extent of bus and railway controls."[8] The administrative documents used in occupied France, such as ration cards which she collected could be reproduced in London for use by agents on clandestine missions in France.[2] She returned to the United Kingdom through Spain and to the British base at Gibraltar.[9]

On 21 April 1942, her husband, Victor Gerson landed by submarine at Antibes to organise the VIC Escape Line,[10] which provided an escape route from France via Spain back to England for downed airmen, SOE agents, and others.[11]

References

  1. ↑ Catalogue description Gilliana (or Gigliana) Balmaceta (or Balmaceda) Provasoli GERSON - born 29.09.1910. 1939–1946.
  2. 1 2 3 Spartacus Educational Publishers - Victor Gerson
  3. ↑ O'Connor, Bernard (15 March 2018). SOE Heroines: The Special Operations Executive's French Section and Free French Women Agents. Amberley Publishing Limited. ISBN 978-1-4456-7361-5.
  4. ↑ The National Archives : HS 9/575/2 - Gilliana (or Gigliana) Balmaceta
  5. 1 2 Spymistress: The True Story of the Greatest Female Secret Agent of World War II, William Stevenson, Simon and Schuster, 2011.
  6. ↑ Foot, M. R. D. (1976). SOE in France. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office. p. 156. ISBN 0116301929.
  7. ↑ Ruby, Marcel (1988). F Section SOE: The Story of the Buckmaster Network. Pen and Sword.
  8. ↑ Foot 1976, p. 156.
  9. ↑ Stevenson, William (11 October 2011). Spymistress: The True Story of the Greatest Female Secret Agent of World War II. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-1-62872-186-7.
  10. ↑ Duel of Wits, Peter Churchill, Hodder and Stoughton, 1953
  11. ↑ Nigel Perrin
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