Sarah Powell - Marriage and Death

Marriage and Death

Powell met Lawrence Powell in January 1940, upon having visited London to promote her poetry collection. Lawrence Powell translated her work into English and she lived with him in his Kensington home in West London for several months before their marriage in April 1940. He was exempt from war duties as he was classified mentally unstable for combat, leading to them both moving back to Paris by May 1940. The timing was to prove fatal, with the German troops invading France and the Low Countries only weeks later. In the mass exodus from Paris, Sarah was captured by German troops when heading south towards the safe haven of Bordeaux. Lawrence was captured also, but his non-Jewish features were to ultimately save him. In the obituary he would later write for his wife, he stated that: "A love that obeyed no boundaries was what brought us together, but simply a Jewish face was what tore us apart."

Sarah Powell was executed in the Dachau concentration camp in 1941 (the exact date is unknown). Her name can be found today on the wall of Holocaust victims in the Jewish Museum of Paris, Le Marais district. Another name to be found alongside hers is that of Natalie Costanza, her friend and collaborator, who accompanied Sarah on the exodus from Paris. Costanza's Jewish background also worked against her. Lawrence Powell would later pen a poem, I don't get it, about the women's deaths.