Enemy of the Reich: The Noor Inayat Khan Story

Witness a journey to share an untold story of courage about a Muslim woman hero who stood up against the Nazis and risked her life.

Noor Inayat Khan was the daughter of Hazrat Inayat Khan and Ora Ray Baker. She was born in Moscow on Jan 1, 1914. She was a direct descendant of Tipu Sultan, the 18th century Muslim ruler of Mysore. Her father was a musician and Sufi teacher, playing a major role in her spirituality and religious upbringing. She grew up in Paris and following the fall of France in 1940, she escaped to England and joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force. In 1942, she joined the Special Operations Executive (S.O.E.), an organization whose main goal was to sabotage and bring down the Axis powers. Khan worked as a telegraph operator and helped transmit information back to Britain from France under the alias ‘Madeleine.’ Following a betrayal from her French comrades, she was arrested by the Nazi secret police. She made several attempts at escaping from prison but she was recaptured and, finally, sent to the Dachau Concentration Camp in Germany. She never cooperated with her captors nor revealed any names or secrets leading up to her execution in September of 1944, just before the end of World War II. She and three other female SOE agent were shot on 13 September. For her courage, Noor Khan was posthumously awarded the George Cross in 1949.

In June 2013, Robert H. Gardner began directing a 60-minute biographical docu-drama to air on PBS in 2014. Unity Productions Foundation is scheduled to release this production. 

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Printing History

Written by Shrabani Basu

Sutton Publishing Ltd

February 2006

ISBN 075 093965