Abram
Cyril Henry
2 Commando
Rifleman
6922005
23rd October 1942
20
Brookwood Memorial,Surrey Panel 15 Column 1
parent unit Rifle Brigade
born 20.8.1922 London E
resided London E
son of H.G. and Mrs Abram,Manor Park,Essex
POW 15/21.9.1942 (Op.Musketoon,Norway) -executed Sachsenhausen,Germany
“He Died in the Shadows: The Heroism and Sacrifice of Rifleman Cyril Henry Abram”
Eighty-three years ago, a young British commando named Cyril Henry Abram was executed in cold blood by the Nazi regime at Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp in Germany. He was just twenty years old.
Rifleman Abram, of the Rifle Brigade (The Prince Consort’s Own), was among a handful of elite men selected for one of the most daring missions of the Second World War — Operation Musketoon. In September 1942, Abram joined nine British commandos and two Norwegian operatives to infiltrate German-occupied Norway. Their objective: to sabotage the Glomfjord hydroelectric plant, a facility vital to the German aluminium production that fed Hitler’s war machine.
The mission succeeded — the plant was rendered inoperable — but the cost would be tragically high. During the team’s exfiltration through the mountainous terrain, seven men, including Abram, were captured by German forces.
Rather than being treated as prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention, Abram and his comrades were subjected to Hitler’s infamous “Kommandobefehl” — the Commando Order — which called for the immediate execution of all captured special operations personnel. On 23 October 1942, without trial or appeal, the young British soldier was murdered in Sachsenhausen, a place of unspeakable cruelty where justice had long since vanished.
Cyril Abram’s name is now inscribed on the Brookwood Memorial in Surrey, alongside those of more than 3,000 other servicemen and women of the Second World War who have no known grave. But for those who know his story, Abram’s legacy endures not in marble alone, but in memory — a symbol of valour, duty, and the brutal price of resistance.
He was a son, a comrade, a young man with his life ahead of him. And in the darkness of war, he stood as a light — brief, bright, and never forgotten. A cousin I never knew about until very recently, his military record heavily redacted.
I remember Cyril Henry Abram. He died in silence so others might live in peace.
(Samantha Rowley, VE Day 8 May 2025)
