[The following is in regards to the heroic actions of Sofka Dolgorouky, former Russian royalty, who found herself a Communist sympathizer in a Nazi internment camp called Vittel, one of the more hospitable camps used to house enemy civilians.]
In June 1942, Sofka’s internment “idyll” came crashing down when she learned that her husband was missing in action; his death was confirmed that September. She refused to leave her bed or eat and was admitted to the camp’s hospital. Grey’s [her husband’s] death shook Sofka to her core, but she found some comfort in the arms of a Jewish prisoner named Izio, who arrived at the camp in 1943 with his 4-year-old daughter and mother (his wife had been murdered by the Nazis). When the day came that the Nazis took the Jewish prisoners to the concentration camps, Izio could have escaped, but alone. Instead, he, too, went to his death.
Sofka’s grief turned to rage. She’d passed on information to the Resistance about the conditions the Jews were facing, about how 16 of them tried to commit suicide rather than leave Vittel, how she smuggled out a newborn baby, sedated with pills from the camp hospital and swaddled in a blanket in a Red Cross box, after his mother was sent to her death. But it seemed like the Allies did nothing. Sofka continued to do what she could. In 1944, when she and some of her friends were allowed to leave Vittel, they carried the names of Polish inmates on pieces of paper sewn into the linings of their coats. After her death, Sofka’s efforts on behalf of the Jews at Vittel were recognized by the Holocaust Remembrance Institute in Israel.
Source:
McRobbie, Linda Rodriguez. “Sofka Dolgorouky, The Princess Who Turned Communist.” Princesses Behaving Badly: Real Stories From History-- Without the Fairy-Tale Endings. MJF Books, 2013. 148-49. Print.
Further Reading:
Sofka Skipwith (born Princess Sophia Dolgorouky)
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