Violette Reine Elizabeth Szabo GC (née Bushell; 26 June 1921 – c. 5 February 1945) was a British/French Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent during the Second World War and a posthumous recipient of the George Cross. On her second mission into occupied France, Szabo was captured by the German army, interrogated, tortured and deported to Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany, where she was executed.
Violette Szabo was born Violette Reine Elizabeth Bushell on 26 June 1921 in Paris, France.
She was the second child of five and the only daughter of Charles George Bushell, son of a publican from Hampstead Norreys. Szabo's father was serving as a British Army driver in France during the First World War when he met her mother, Reine Blanche Leroy, a dressmaker originally from Pont-Remy, Somme. After the war, the couple lived in London, where Charles Bushell worked as taxi-driver, car salesman, and shopkeeper.