Edward Zeff

Edward Zeff MBE Croix de Guerre (1904–1974) was a British agent of the Special Operations Executive during the Second World War.

Early life Edward Zeff was born to Jewish parents in Brighton on 22 April 1904. He was educated at York Place Elementary Schools in Brighton. In around 1922 he joined his older brother in Paris to develop the family tailoring business in Paris and, after the fall of France in 1940, returned to Britain with his French wife, Reine Sevilla.

World War II Monument commemorating the landing of Capt. Peter Churchill from HMS Unbroken at Cap d'Antibes on 21 April 1942 Edward Zeff trained as a signaller and, as a fluent French speaker, volunteered for the French Section of the Special Operations Executive.

In Operation DELAY II Peter Churchill's mission was to land four SOE agents on the French Riviera by submarine. They travelled in HM Submarine P 42 "Unbroken" to Antibes where on the night of 21 April 1942 Churchill took Newman and Zeff and their radios to the shore by canoe, and led them to their contact Dr Élie Lévy. Churchill then returned to the submarine and dropped off Clech and Gerson by canoe at Pointe d'Agay near Fréjus before returning to the UK. For his work as a radio operator he was supported by Denis Rake «Justin» and Pierre Le Chêne «Grégoire».

He was sent successively to Fresnes prison, in a prison in Prague, Mauthausen concentration camp, then Melk where he was condemned to receive fifty lashes before being hanged but escaped death having befriended one of the camp Kommandants, finally, again at Mauthausen, where he was the only British Jew who was there at the time of the liberation by the Americans in 1945. He had been brutally tortured over three months but revealed no information to the Nazis.

Post-war In 1945 he arrived home to his wife in Brighton, but later returned to his business in Paris where he died in 1974. France: Croix de Guerre (with Silver Star)

Civil A plaque in Brighton commemorates his post-war home.