Mathilde Carré

Who was Mathilde Carré?

Mathilde Carré, known as "La Chatte", was a French Resistance agent during World War II who turned double agent.

Mathilde Carré was born in Le Creusot, Saône-et-Loire. In the 1930s she attended Sorbonne University and became a teacher. After her marriage, she moved to Algeria with her husband Maurice Carré, who was later killed in World War II, during the campaign of Italy.

She returned to France, worked as a nurse and witnessed the country fall to the Germans. In 1940, she met a Polish Air Force Captain named Roman Czerniawski cryptonymed "Walenty" to the Poles and "Armand" or "Victor" to the French. Carré, who had contacts with the Vichy Second Bureau, joined the headquarters section of his Franco-Polish Interallié espionage network based in Paris under the cryptonym "Victoire" although nicknamed La Chatte, for her feline predatory and stealthy propensities.

On 17 November 1941, the Abwehr's Hugo Bleicher arrested Czerniawski, Carré and many other members of Interallié; they had been uncovered when an informant in Normandy had been exposed to the Gestapo.