MAD, A HEROINE IN THE SHADOWS

February 21, 2018

A new TV film based on the book “LA SOURCE MAD” by Marie Gatard
On France 5, Sunday, February 25, 2018 at 10.35 p.m.
LA CASE DU SIÈCLE – WOMEN IN HISTORY

Mad, a heroine in the shadows. For the French Special Services during the Second World War, Mad was the code name of one of their main agents, Madeleine Richou. She was able to provide crucial information on many of Hitler’s plans thanks to her ties with an Austrian officer, Colonel Erwin Lahousen Edler von Vivremont, one of those closest to Admiral Canaris, head of the Abwehr.

Scrupulously respecting her duty of confidentiality, this discreet, self-effacing but very courageous woman remained silent all her life. Her memoirs, found at the Fort de Vincennes and only recently declassified, reveal the exceptional story of Madeleine Richou and Erwin Lahousen, working together against Nazism although officially in opposing camps.

Years of a life in constant danger. Mad used every stratagem to escape the Gestapo, shake off people tailing her and send coded messages, as Nazism rose in Vienna, then in Berlin and Budapest. She lived through the successive arrival of German and Soviet troops and spent fifty days in a cellar beneath a battlefield.

Through her rare courage, her intelligence and her self-sacrifice, she offers an exemplary image of what a true secret agent can be: a woman capable of absolute respect for the law of silence.

The book “La Source MAD” by Marie Gatard (Éd. Michalon) gives a faithful and gripping account of it.