Betrayed, tortured... then finally reunited with big brother

Born in 1917, Catherine was 12 years younger than brother, Christian.

The pair were the closest of five siblings who grew up in Normandy until their father lost his fortune in the Wall Street crash. When their mother died in 1931, fashion designer Christian, 26, took his 14-year-old sister to live with him and she became a model for his early designs.

On Hitler’s invasion of France, the pair left Paris for Provence but Christian moved back to the city to work for designer Lucien Lelong. Catherine stayed in the south and fell in love with married French Resistance member Hervé des Charbonneries, of the F2 intelligence network, who provided crucial information about German troop movements to the Allies. Catherine joined, setting up an operation from her brother’s Paris apartment.

She was arrested in 1944 after a fellow resistance member betrayed her and 25 other fighters. She was seized and tortured. Then on August 15, Catherine became one of the final 400 women to be deported to Germany, just

10 days before the liberation of France. She was first taken to Ravensbrück – the only Nazi concentration camp solely for women where between 30,000 and 90,000 lost their lives. Over the next eight months, Catherine spent time in three of Ravensbrück’s satellite camps.

Forced to toil for 12 hours a day in a munitions plant, where sulphurous fumes damaged her lungs, she managed to sabotage machinery. Despite repeated beatings, starvation and disease, she refused to be cowed.

On April 21, eight days after she and other inmates were sent on a death march to keep them from approaching Allied troops, she escaped.

She returned to Paris the following month to be reunited with her brother. Said to be inspired by his sister’s heroism, in 1946 he set up his eponymous fashion house, launching his iconic perfume, Miss Dior in 1947. Today, the Christian Dior name lives on and is worth around £9 billion.