Marthe Cohn was barely 25 on April 11, 1945, and Jewish, but being blond and blue-eyed, she could pass for an Aryan. She was French, from northeastern Alsace, but spoke German fluently. She was a nurse and 4 feet 11 inches tall. She was also a spy, working with the French resistance to Nazi occupiers in WWII. She died on May 20 at her home in Rancho Palos Verdes, CA, where she had settled with her American husband, long after her wartime exploits. Her husband found out about her experiences after they were married, and her children only recently. She was 105.

Early on, to escape the Nazis, a non-Jewish colleague provided false papers, she told The Southern New England Ledger in 2015. As she led her mother and maternal grandmother to safety, she feared that local peasants would report them to the authorities for a reward. One old man in work clothes stared at the three women. “Without saying a word,” she said, he suddenly dropped onto one knee and, hand on his chest, lowered his head in prayer. Next to him, his wife knelt on both knees in the dirt and made the sign of the cross.”

“I could hardly believe my eyes,” she added. “It was so beautiful, the humanity of it. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I nodded my head in silent thanks.”

Ms. Cohn was named a chevalier of the French Legion of Honor in 2004, and awarded the Order of Merit of Germany in 2014. “If you are thrown into certain circumstances, you are going to go through what you never thought you could do,” she said.