Agnes Daluge, 79, was a young spy in WWII

As a teen, the Eden Prairie woman helped hundreds flee the Nazis, but to her children, she was "just Mom."

By Ben Cohen, Star Tribune

Last update: September 27, 2007 - 9:57 PM

When Agnes Daluge told her children years ago that she was a teenage spy for the Allies during World War II in Germany, her children thought she was joking.

But it was no joke. She helped save 300 people.

As a teenager, she was pulled into an aunt's secret life, running secret messages and transporting those wanted by the Nazis to safety. Most of those she helped were Jews.

Daluge, who married a GI and moved to the Twin Cities around 1950, died on Sunday at her Eden Prairie home. She was 79.

She grew up poor in Slovakia. In 1939, after she survived several life-threatening illnesses, her aunt, Rosa Schneider, took her into her home in Munich, Germany, according to Daluge's book and testimony given to the University of Southern California Shoah Foundation Institute in Los Angeles.

When Daluge became a teenager, her aunt drew her into the service of Munich's underground forces, defying the Nazi regime and working with the OSS, the forerunner of the CIA.

Daluge, who was 5 feet, pretended that she was a child of people fleeing Germany to give their story an air of legitimacy. She played her accordion at recitals with a particular tune or a nod at a certain passage to a secret message. At her aunt's prodding, she learned several languages.

One time, she scrambled up a mountain to help rescue a U.S. military pilot ahead of the Nazis in the Alps near her aunt's house, said Daluge's son, Wendell of St. Cloud.

"She said she didn't know what she was getting into until it was too late, and then it was too exciting to stop," he said.

Once a German soldier held a knife at her back for breaking curfew, but she talked her way out of trouble.

Although other rescuers were caught and executed, Daluge never knew many details of their operations, she said in a July 18, 1998, Star Tribune article. "My aunt had tears in her eyes several times; she'd say, 'Well, we lost another one,'" Daluge said.

For many years, she didn't talk about her service, just telling her young children that she was a spy.

"We'd go, 'Oh yeah, Mom, sure,'" said her daughter, Margaret Plank of Palatine, Ill.

"She was just Mom. You wouldn't know she was a spy. She had a lovely personality. If there was polka music playing, she would love to polka with you."

After the war, she worked for the Americans and was granted U.S. citizenship.

While working for the Americans in post-war Europe she met and married a U.S. soldier, Willard Daluge of Eden Prairie, who had grown up in Truman, Minn. After the war, they returned to the United States, eventually settling in the Twin Cities.

Her book is titled "Rosa's Miracle Mouse: The True Story of a World War II Undercover Teenager."

In the 1960s, she worked for Control Data.

Her aunt, who had adopted Daluge, died in 1971. She is survived by her husband, daughter, son and four grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. today, at Prairie Lutheran Church, 11000 Blossom Rd., Eden Prairie. Visitation will take place at 10 a.m. at the church.

Ben Cohen • bcohen@startribune.com

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