The Model Spy, Maryka Biaggio
This book turned out to be a far better read than I thought it would be. In the beginning, I thought perhaps it was really written for a Young Adult audience, but soon, I was disabused of that idea. The book is based on the life of Toto Koopman, and as she matured, I changed my mind. At first, she seemed to be a woman of very low morals, selfish and overly self-confident, often changing lovers like some people change their under garments. However, as she matured, became a nurse and then a veritable asset to the war effort as a spy, she seemed to find her calling, wanting more out of life than pleasure; she offered her services in any capacity to the resistance or to Great Britain, sometimes begging to be an asset. She spoke several languages, was very wily, and her beauty and personality were often magnetic, enabling her to charm those she came in contact with, eliciting information to pass on to the spymasters and partisans.
When the book begins, it is 1914, Toto, the child of a Dutch father and Indonesian mother, has suffered the slings and arrows of bigotry. However, when she is sent off to boarding school, her parents had instilled enough self-confidence in her to allow her to use her beauty, intelligence and wit to aid her in her effort to overcome the abusive behavior she sometimes encountered, and to succeed beyond her wildest dreams. She graced the covers of Vogue and other magazines, modeled for Chanel, mixed with dignitaries, politicians and world leaders, corresponding and dating such men as Randolph Churchill, and befriending Pamela Churchill and others of prominent backgrounds. Still, she proposed to give her leisurely, upscale life up, because she truly wished to aid the effort to stop the monstrous behavior of Mussolini at first, and then Hitler’s barbarism.
Still, she seemed to be a woman who gave in to her prurient desires, taking lovers at will, and behaving as she pleased, regardless of social protocols. Her sexuality covered all aspects of her relationships, male and female. Toto, did not mind assuming other identities or even becoming a honey trap when she had to, in order to solicit information. There were few women aiding the war effort in this way, but she trained and learned how to defend herself, pass and receive secrets and, hopefully, how to survive. She didn’t mind using men to get what she wanted, but no matter how loose or unconventional she may have seemed, at first, don’t judge her too harshly because she had the courage to survive in both Italian prison camps and German Concentration Camps, and she never betrayed her fellow spies in spite of beatings, starvation and degradation, in spite of being begged by the enemy to turn and aid them instead. Even to save herself, she would not work for Italy or Germany. Instead, she served her time, escaped, was recaptured, suffered intensely was even experimented upon, but still she aided the war effort as a courier, as an interpreter, helping and leading soldiers and partisans to escape to safety, rescuing Jewish children, rescuing prisoners, saving some from being condemned to death, who were in the prison camps with her, and even carried secrets out of Ravensbruck when she was freed at the war's end.
I have read widely on the subject of World War II. This book covers it from many vantage points, as it explores the life of Toto Koopman, a largely unsung heroine. It illustrates the brutality that partisans, gypsies, political prisoners and all those captured and imprisoned in various places by Mussolini, Hirohito, and Hitler had to endure. While it reveals many things I had heard of, like the cattle cars, the forced marches, cold-blooded murder and torture, and the experiments on the prisoners called “rabbits”, it also revealed something I had not known, and that was that there was anesthetic-free, forced sterilization of those women not considered purely Aryan, like those of mixed races and those of gypsy heritage. Dr. Mengele was not the only maniacal monster. Toto Koopman was forced to live through the ordeal of these brutalized women and suffer the consequences. This book covers a broad spectrum of the barbarism of the Axis countries, and it is worth the time it takes to read it.
It is told in the first person and it soon begins to feel as if, in this fictionalized version of her life, Toto is speaking directly to you, the reader, taking you into her confidence, forcing you, the reader, to sometimes wish you could offer her some comfort. Starved, beaten, imprisoned without proof of a crime, tortured, she weathered the storms of the war years, and then lived fairly quietly thereafter. Biracial, bisexual, a free spirit willing to sacrifice to save others, she deserves your honor, your respect and your praise.