During WWII the German security services were very good at their jobs. The Abwehr (German army intelligence) were especially professional and successful. The Gestapo (Nazi party secret police) were also quite successful, if only because almost everyone breaks under torture given enough of it.

But they were not all-knowing or all-seeing and were not correct in their conclusions all of the time. They could cover a lot of that up because they could take hostages and make arbitrary arrests.  But sometimes they needed luck to go their way as well.

For example, a young woman named Jacqueline (born 1922) worked for Dutch-Paris as a guide and courier between Paris and Toulouse. She escorted Engelandvaarders and Allied aviators on the train from Paris and to their Dutch-Paris rendezvous in Toulouse. On these same trips she carried large amounts of cash to pay for the fugitives’ treks over the Pyrenees.  She may also have done similar work for another escape line.

Jacqueline was arrested at her parents’ home in Paris-Neuilly in June 1944 (after the Normandy Landings). While they were there, the Gestapo also arrested her mother (born 1899). They were both deported to Ravensbrück.

Was Jacqueline’s mother part of Dutch-Paris? Yes, in the sense that the German authorities thought she was and punished her for being part of the line.  For that same reason, she appears on the official list of members of Dutch-Paris.

But the documents – which are very incomplete – have nothing to say about what Jacqueline’s mother might have been doing with Dutch-Paris before her arrest.  Interestingly, the documents do agree that she and her husband, Jacqueline’s father, were involved with a different escape line starting in 1942. It’s possible that they shared information with Dutch-Paris via Jacqueline. Resisters often worked for more than one network, possibly without even knowing who they were working with.

So Jacqueline’s mother had broken the occupation laws and was working as a resister. She was not innocent of illegal activity. She just wasn’t punished for the exact crime she’d committed. The Gestapo got a lucky break that she was at home when they went to arrest her daughter.