Mary Helen Young
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Mary Helen Young | |
|---|---|
 Portrait of Mary Helen Young from Aberdeen Press and Journal 27 September 1945. | |
| Born | 5 June 1883 Aberdeen, Scotland |
| Died | 14 March 1945 (aged 61) |
| Cause of death | Gas chamber |
| Other names | Marie Hélène Young |
| Occupation | Nurse |
| Known for | Assisting the French Resistance, murdered by the Nazis |
Mary Helen Young (5 June 1883 – 14 March 1945) was a Scottish nurse and resistance fighter who helped British servicemen escape from Nazi-occupied France during World War II. She was imprisoned by the Gestapo and put to death at Ravensbrück concentration camp in 1945.[1][2]
Young was born on 5 June 1883 in Aberdeen to Elizabeth Ann Burnett (1854–1884) and Alexander Young (1855–1913), a clerk. Her mother died while she was a baby, after which she moved with her family, her father and two elder siblings, to Edinburgh. After school, she worked as a dressmaker at Jenners department store. She left Edinburgh in 1904 to go to Surrey to train as a nurse, gaining state registration in 1908. In 1909 she travelled to Paris, France, to work as a private nurse.[1][2][3]
World War I
At the outbreak of World War I Young volunteered for service with the British Red Cross, working in the British Army zone in France, nursing wounded troops on the Western Front. Young's fiancé was killed in World War I. After the war, she returned to private nursing in Paris travelling occasionally to Scotland to visit her sister Annie Sutherland in Aberdeen and her aunt in Ballater.[1][2][3][4]