Pho­to of Noor Inay­at Khan, Code Name Madeleine

Noor Inay­at Khan, the focus of my book, Code Name Madeleine, was a most unlike­ly secret agent of World War II: a Sufi, or Islam­ic mys­tic, and an acclaimed poet, musi­cian, and writer of children’s sto­ries, Noor was recruit­ed by Britain’s top-secret Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Exec­u­tive (SOE), then sur­vived in occu­pied Paris three times longer than most oth­er agents from the same agency. Engaged in what she called the joy of sac­ri­fice” to defeat the Nazis and save Jew­ish lives, Noor was exe­cut­ed at Dachau; defi­ant to the end, her last word was lib­ertè.”

Noor’s moth­er, Ora, was Amer­i­can. Her father, Hazrat Inay­at Khan, was Indi­an and intro­duced Sufism to the West in 1910. Noor her­self was born in Moscow in 1914, then raised in a vil­lage oppo­site Paris. She matured into a strong willed young woman, who invari­ably put oth­ers before her­self; ser­vice was a bedrock of the creed she inher­it­ed from her father. The essence of mys­ti­cism,” Inay­at taught, is readi­ness to serve the per­son next to us… To become an angel,” he con­tin­ued, is not very dif­fi­cult,” but liv­ing in the world, with all its dif­fi­cul­ties and strug­gles, and being human at the same time, [that] is dif­fi­cult. If we become that, then we become the minia­ture of God on earth.” For father and daugh­ter, spir­i­tu­al­i­ty did not hinge on retreat­ing to an ethe­re­al, dis­tant realm. It was here and it was now.

When the time came to serve dur­ing World War II, the SOE flew Noor into Europe the night of June 16th, 1943. Noor was the SOE’s first female radio oper­a­tor in France. Con­stant­ly on the run, she held the Gestapo at bay while nev­er stray­ing from the demand­ing ethics she had learned from her father: Bear no mal­ice against your worst ene­my.” Do not neglect those who depend upon you.” Do not spare your­self in the work which you must accom­plish.” When Noor was final­ly caught, she told the Ger­mans noth­ing of val­ue, win­ning their respect even while try­ing to escape twice—the first time by bal­anc­ing on a rain gut­ter five floors up on the façade of a Gestapo prison in the mid­dle of Paris. After Noor’s sec­ond escape attempt, she was sent to a prison in Ger­manyimpris­oned in soli­tary con­fine­ment and in chains, wrist to wrist and ankle to ankle. Ten months lat­er, she was killed at age thirty.

Noor was the SOE’s first female radio oper­a­tor in France. Con­stant­ly on the run, she held the Gestapo at bay while nev­er stray­ing from the demand­ing ethics she had learned from her father.

Noor defied everyone’s expec­ta­tions — the British and the Ger­mans. One SOE train­er said she was not over­bur­dened with brains.” Though Noor had more than her share, the train­er was cer­tain Noor lacked the reflex­es and inge­nu­ity to out­wit the Ger­mans for even the scant six weeks of the aver­age radio oper­a­tor in France. When anoth­er train­er warned Noor that she might reveal secrets if the Gestapo tor­tured her, she came up with a sim­ple solu­tion: she would remain silent. She didn’t quite stay qui­et, but the Nazis nev­er gained any­thing use­ful from her. And though the Gestapo had its own ver­sion of hon­or,” it was no match for Noor’s. Hers rest­ed on com­pas­sion, truth, courage, and the sacred­ness of life; theirs rest­ed on an unyield­ing loy­al­ty to Hitler.

Noor sent invalu­able infor­ma­tion to Lon­don on the thir­ty-pound radio which she lugged around Paris — some of it key to the suc­cess of D‑Day, still a year away. Her moti­va­tion was sim­ple: she abhorred Nazism in gen­er­al and its exter­mi­na­tion of Jews in par­tic­u­lar. That’s why I’m con­vinced a phrase she wrote in the late 1930s sums up her rea­son for fight­ing the Ger­mans: The heart must be bro­ken for the real to come forth.” The war broke Noor’s heart, and the real came forth, a real” of pain, devo­tion, and a high­er and bet­ter artic­u­lat­ed call­ing than what ani­mat­ed most agents.

Noor’s spir­i­tu­al­i­ty allowed her to embrace the jos­tle and the annoy­ances of the world, and to with­stand its hor­rors. For her, these were indis­pens­able to life, and she nev­er pushed away life. This was sim­i­lar to how Rab­bi Abra­ham Joshua Hes­chel — activist and friend of Mar­tin Luther King Jr. — would lat­er describe those who are spir­i­tu­al­ly and social­ly aware. Such indi­vid­u­als, said Hes­chel, com­bine a very deep love, a very pow­er­ful dis­sent, a painful rebuke, with unwa­ver­ing hope.” Hope was Noor’s ban­ner. She car­ried it so human­i­ty could redeem itself.

Sufis hold a memo­r­i­al ser­vice for Noor every Sep­tem­ber at Dachau, a few hun­dred feet from the cre­ma­to­ri­um where her body was incin­er­at­ed in 1944.

Noor’s ded­i­ca­tion to fight­ing for life is inspir­ing. The abrupt and ear­ly end of her life is trag­ic. Yet the full­ness of her thir­ty years can remind us of our poten­tial to be ful­ly human, and ful­ly com­pas­sion­ate, even in the most try­ing of cir­cum­stances. That’s one rea­son why Sufis hold a memo­r­i­al ser­vice for Noor every Sep­tem­ber at Dachau, a few hun­dred feet from the cre­ma­to­ri­um where her body was incin­er­at­ed in 1944.

I’ve been invit­ed to speak there this fall. If the pan­dem­ic eas­es and I’m allowed into Europe, I’ll men­tion a Cha­sidic say­ing: If you want to find a spark, sift through the ash­es.” More than sev­en decades after the war, there are ash­es at Dachau. I know — I’ve been there. But there are also sparks — Noor’s and thou­sands of oth­ers who were killed there. The ash­es are the weight from the past; the sparks are how they illu­mi­nate our present.

Noor urged us not to turn our back on life. Life,” she said, is a strug­gle and we must be ready to strug­gle.” Let the strug­gle begin, one that is no dif­fer­ent than what inspir­it­ed a young Sufi woman and what Pirkei Avot espous­es: Do not be daunt­ed by the enor­mi­ty of the world’s grief. Do just­ly now. Love mer­cy now. Walk humbly now. You are not oblig­at­ed to com­plete the work, but nei­ther are you free to aban­don it.” Noor nev­er aban­doned her work. The world is a bet­ter place for that.


Code Name Madeleine has been nom­i­nat­ed for a Pulitzer and optioned for a film

Arthur J. Magi­da has been nom­i­nat­ed for a Pulitzer and won mul­ti­ple awards. His last two books—Code Name Madeleine (“absolute­ly grip­ping,” tight­ly plot­ted”) and The Nazi Séance (“an aston­ish­ing sto­ry, bril­liant­ly told,” haunt­ing, vivid”) — are optioned for films. He’s been a con­tribut­ing cor­re­spon­dent to PBS’s Reli­gion & Ethics Newsweek­ly, senior edi­tor of The Bal­ti­more Jew­ish Times, and edi­to­r­i­al direc­tor for Jew­ish Lights Pub­lish­ing. He lives in Baltimore.