Audrey Hepburn might have become famous in starring in films like Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Roman Holiday and My Fair Lady, but before all of that she was a key figure in
Though she didn’t mention it much during her lifetime, a biography released after Audrey’s death shared how the Second World War affected her and saw her join the Resistance.
Born in Brussels, Belgium, in 1929, Audrey was just 10 years old at the start of the war. Her father was a Nazi agent and her mother, a baroness, supported Both her parents joined the British Union of Fascists and met privately with Hitler in 1935, four years before the outbreak of the war.
But later that year, her father abandoned the family, with her parents filing for divorce. Audrey’s dad moved to England and was imprisoned as an enemy of the state, and her mother was left struggling to support herself and her daughter while living in an apartment in the Netherlands.
Things turned tragic from there – Audrey’s uncle was rounded up and shot, causing her mother to withdraw her support for Hitler. Audrey watched children being carted off to concentration camps.
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Audrey Hepburn was a secret WW2 spy (Image: Getty)
By 1944, when she was 15, Audrey joined the underground Resistance and found work with anti-German leader Dr Hendrik. A keen dancer, Audrey would raise money through illegal performances known as “black evenings” due to the blackouts enforced on Europe – and audiences were forbidden from making a sound or any applause so they weren’t detected.
She also helped to deliver a Resistance newspaper – printed on paper the size of just half a napkin – which she would hide in her socks. She delivered messages and food to British pilots who crash landed, and her family eventually secretly took in an English pilot who was shot down over the Netherlands.
Audrey’s mum was a Nazi – but switched sides after a brutal family killing (Image: Getty)
Her town wasn’t liberated from Nazi control until spring 1945, after Audrey had already struggled with malnourishment due to low food supplies.
That wasn’t the only lasting effect on Audrey. Her mother was banned from entering the US due to her Nazi support, and her son Luca Dotti described his mother as “more than a steel-butterfly; she was a battle-hardened bada**.”