ONE of the last key figures in the Second World War Danish Resistance, Varinka Wichfeld-Muus was born into an aristocratic provincial milieu on the island of Lolland, south Denmark, closely involved in the struggle against the occupying German forces.

While her father, Jørgen Wichfeld, assumed a more or less neutral stance against the Nazi invaders, Varinka’s Anglo-Irish aristocrat mother, Monica Wichfeld (née Massy-Beresford), worked closely with Free Denmark and Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE) in sabotage activities before being arrested by the Germans in 1944 and sentenced to death for refusing to leak information about her involvement in the Resistance and her contacts. Monica Wichfeld’s sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, but she died of tuberculosis in prison in Waldheim, Germany, in February 1945, aged only 50.

Varinka had helped her mother with arms pickups, hiding and feeding wanted persons, running errands and becoming a resistance leader in her own right, before joining the legendary Flemming Muus as secretary — and wife after a secret wedding — in Copenhagen in 1944 at the height of the Danish resistance effort against Germany.

Flemming Muus, who died in 1982 aged 74, was at that time SOE’s chief agent in Denmark and an Allied Observer on the Freedom Council, the Danish resistance body. More a personal assistant than a secretary, Varinka spent much of her time and energy at the tail end of the war and in the ensuing years defending her husband against allegations of embezzling SOE and other funds entrusted to him in his capacity of Danish resistance leader.

In an atmosphere of internal intrigue and infighting among rowing resistance factions at the end of the occupation, Muus was arrested in June 1946 and sentenced by a Copenhagen court to two years imprisoment for embezzlement, a sentence that was set aside on appeal, on condition that he went into voluntary exile from Denmark for five years.

From 1946 to 1949 Muus and Varinka travelled in luxury to England, South Africa (where he became director of a goldmining company for a while) and Italy, before returning home to Denmark. After Muus’s death, Varinka, a fiery, restive woman, involved herself in virulent attacks against those responsible for her late husband’s imprisonment, exile and disgrace.

Muus himself admitted that large sums of money passed through his hands and that he was slipshod at accounts, but emphasised that security reasons demanded fiscal secrecy and denied all embezzlement charges. The British had only praise for his Second World War activities.

Varinka’s memoirs Fra Solskin til Tusmoerke (From Sunshine to Twilight) were published in 1994.

Varinka Wichfeld-Muus was born in Saxkøbing, Denmark, on February 9, 1922. She died of cancer in Copenhagen on December 18, 2002, aged 80.