JEWISH SPY IN NAZI GERMANY
Born Marthe Hoffnung in Metz in the Alsace-Lorraine region of France, to Fischel and his wife, Regine Bleitrach.
She was the fifth of eight children. They were Fred, Eugene (who died aged two), Cecile, Arnold, Marthe, Stephanie, Helene and Rosy.
Alsace-Lorraine was in German possession between 1871 (the Franco-Prussian War) and 1918 (the end of the First World War). Consequently, both her parents spoke only German – but all the children were multi-lingual.
Marthe’s grandfather, Moishe Bleitrach, was a Rabbi who taught her the love of books. Her father owned a photography shop and they lived at number four, Rue de Marshal Petain in Metz.
The family were devoutly religious.
The first time Marthe witnessed anti-semitism was when the synagogue in Metz was defaced. Her father took his belt off and chased away the teenagers who were throwing stones at the building.
Marthe remembered getting into fights at school with Catholic children who were telling anti-Jewish jokes.
In 1938, Kristallnacht took place in Germany. Her parents hosted Jewish refugees who were fleeing their homeland. “Never for one moment did I think that the same thing would happen to us. Not in France…I believed in human nature. I still had confidence that good would prevail”.
Marthe’s brother Fred, was in the French Army based in Tunisia, but all the Jewish soldiers were thrown out of the military by 1940.
Marthe was nineteen when the Second World War broke out. The whole family moved to Poitiers, four hundred miles from the German border. Marthe went to the local nursing school and had a part-time job working in City Hall.
She met another medical student, Jacques Delaunay, who was a friend of her sister, Stephanie. They got engaged.
Initially, the Jewish population were not treated too badly in Poitiers – but it steadily got worse after the Nazis invaded France.
Eventually her father’s shop was shut on the orders of the Nazis. He was arrested – though released shortly afterwards.
Marthe and Stephanie helped Noel Degout, a local famer, to enable hundreds of Jews to escape from the Nazis.
In 1942, Stephanie, who was studying at the university, was arrested by the Gestapo, after helping another student escape. She was sent to Auschwitz, where she died.
Jacques had joined the French Resistance. He too was arrested and imprisoned.
Sensing the inevitable outcome, Marthe was stopped in the street by a male colleague from City Hall, Mr. Charpentier, who offered her family false papers to get to relative safety in the Free Zone of France.
Marthe asked how much this would cost and her colleague burst into tears. “I do not want to be paid. I want to save you. I can’t just stand by and watch what’s happening.”
With the help of her brother, Arnold, who was in the Resistance, the whole family managed to escape – in the nick of time. Marthe’s close friend, Odile de Morin cycled to her home in the middle of the night and warned the Hoffnung family that Jewish round-ups were about to begin.
Odile was correct. The Gestapo began arresting Jews the very next day.
Marthe completed her nurse training at the Red Cross nursing school in Marseilles, before moving to Paris to live with another sister, Cecile.
After Paris was liberated in November 1944, Marthe learned that her fiancé, Jacques, had been executed at Fort Mount Valarian.
By now, all her surviving sisters were working for the French Resistance.
Marthe immediately tried to enlist with the Intelligence Service of the French Army. She was four feet eleven inches tall, had blonde hair and blue-eyes and was of an Aryan appearance. “At first, they looked at my size and said, ‘Little girl, go back to your mother. You don’t belong in the army.”
She replied, “I’m going to stay.”
“They took me for a bimbo and never trusted or accepted me.”
An officer berated her for never having killed anybody. “I’m a nurse. I heal people, not kill them.”
Marthe was initially given general duties until three weeks later, Colonel Pierre Fabian asked her to man the phone for him whilst he was out of his office. When he returned, he found her reading some German books that he had left lying around. He realised Marthe was fluent in the language, so she was immediately transferred to the Commando unit. “It’s as simple as that – how your life can change.”
After a short, intensive training programme in Mulhouse, in which she was allowed to interview prisoners-of-war, it was decided to send Marthe into Germany as a spy. By now, she had acquired the nickname ‘Chichinette’ (it translates as ‘Little Pain in the Neck’).
Marthe admitted that she was frightened. “I sat and wondered in what predicament I had put myself. But it was too late.”
After fourteen failed attempts to cross the border in the Alsace region (including once falling through the ice on a frozen canal and nearly drowning), Marthe finally entered Germany at Schaffhausen in Switzerland. She ran across a field in the dead of night, carrying only a small suitcase. “I had no arms, maps, radio, and nothing written, not even a flashlight – only a suitcase that contained a change of clothes.”
There were only two armed guards on the border, so she waited until they both had their backs turned before entering Germany.
In Germany, her cover story was that she was a German nurse called Martha Ulrich, desperately searching for her missing fiancé. She carried a photograph of him (in reality it was a photo of a German prisoner-of-war), and showed it to soldiers to see if they knew him.
Everybody sympathised with her. She mixed with Generals, Colonels, common soldiers and even the SS.
She nursed Nazi soldiers, so was in constant contact with the German military – and she learned much vital information.
“I helped Germans wherever I could and they invited me into their homes and gave me food and a bed. That’s how I survived.”
I knew the Germans very well and I knew what would help me. I had a sixth sense for danger. It worked every time.”
Marthe was very quick thinking. One night, her hostess asked her which hospital she had worked in before the war. This was one part of her back story that had been omitted.
She made one up. Her hostess said, “That sounds more like a hotel than a hospital.”
Marthe replied, “You are right Madam. It was a hotel before the war, but now it has been turned into a clinic.”
At night, Marthe would crawl over the Swiss border to pass information to her French handlers.
Marthe had a close shave when she was picked up by a truck full of German soldiers. She fell asleep.
She was roughly shaken awake. Marthe cried out, “Why? What’s going on?” It was an air raid – but she had spoken in French. The soldier’s suspicions were aroused, and they reached for their guns.
However, Marthe shouted “Air raid or not, I need to relieve myself. My bladder is fit to burst” and ran off behind some bushes. From there, she ran up a hill to safety, hitching a lift from a horse-drawn milk wagon.
Marthe was once arrested in Switzerland by French soldiers, who thought she was a German spy and threatened to shoot her on the spot. She talked her way out of it.
There were two bits of crucial information she discovered that significantly contributed to the end of the war.
Firstly, she learned the Germans had evacuated the Siegfried Line north of Freiburg. This enabled Allied forces to enter German territory without a fight.
Secondly, she learned remnants of the Wehrmacht (German Army), lay hidden in the Black Forest, waiting to ambush Allied forces. Marthe relayed the exact co-ordinates of where they were hidden – and the ambush was avoided.
After the war ended, she was offered the opportunity to remain with the intelligence services, but Marthe turned it down. “I’m a nurse. It’s what I do best.”
She returned to France to resume her nursing career. She was immediately awarded the Croix de Guerre.
Marthe spent a short while nursing in Vietnam, as Indochina (as it was then called) was part of the French empire.
Eventually, Marthe took more qualifications in Geneva. It was there that she met American, Major Lloyd Cohn, who was a medical student. He had been on a US Navy minesweeper during the war.
Marthe went back to the USA with him, and they were married. They had two sons, Stephan and Remi.
The couple worked together for years in a hospital in New Jersey. Lloyd was a anaestheologist and Marthe was his nurse anaesthetist. Lloyd went on to become a world-renowned research biologist.
It was not until 1966 that Marthe finally talked about her wartime experiences. She had never even told her husband. “Nobody spoke about the war. They didn’t want to hear it.”
Asked why she had kept her counsel for so long, Marthe replied, “I just thought nobody would believe me. Spies are usually tall and good looking. I am a very unlikely spy.”
After that, she constantly gave her testament, speaking in schools, universities and many other forums. “I shall bear witness until my last breath.”
In 1999, Marthe was awarded the Medaille Militaire. This was followed later by the Legion d’Honneur (2004) and the Medaille of Resistance de la Nation (2006).
“I felt it was the duty of everybody to do the maximum to get the Germans out of France.”
She also won the German Order of Merit. “The Germans feel that I saved German lives because the war was shortened.”
Marthe wrote a book about her experiences in 2002 entitled ‘Behind Enemy Lines’.
This was followed by a documentary film about her, made in 2019. It was called ‘Chichinette: The Accidental Spy’. In it, Marthe gave some advice to young people. “Be engaged – and don’t accept any order that your conscience could not approve.”
Marthe reflected, “Being a spy was the best thing that happened to me.”
Both the farmer, Noel Degout, who worked with Marthe and Stephanie in helping Jewish people escape, and Odile de Morin, Marthe’s friend who warned the family about imminent arrest, were awarded ‘The Righteous Among the Nations’ by the Jerusalem museum Yad Vashem – given to non-Jews who helped Jews escape during the war.
In April 2025, Marthe’s home city of Metz honoured her and her sister Stephanie. On the street where they had lived (now renamed Rue de XXe Corps Americain – changed after Petain’s treachery in World War Two), outside their house at number four, three ‘Solpersteines’ were placed.
This is a German translation of ‘stumbling block’. They are concrete cubes with brass plates on them, commemorating victims of the Nazis (the third one laid was for a rabbi who had been killed in the war).
Marthe was unable to travel to the ceremony.
Three weeks later, Marthe died in Palos Verdes, California, aged 105.
Her husband, Lloyd, survives her.
RIP – Resistance In Plainsight.
