Elizabeth "Betty" Depelsenaire was a Belgian communist, lawyer and feminist.
13 Facts About Elizabeth Depelsenaire
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Elizabeth Depelsenaire was arrested several times during the war, due to her activities and was finally imprisoned at Butzow, Germany.
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Elizabeth Depelsenaire survived the war and returned to work as a lawyer in Belgium.
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Elizabeth Depelsenaire grew up in the bourgeois milieu in Bonheiden, north of Brussels.
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Elizabeth Depelsenaire's mother was Catholic and her father was a lawyer with politically liberal views.
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Elizabeth Depelsenaire was educated at a Catholic boarding school in Ghent.
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Elizabeth Depelsenaire was responsible for a sub-group in the organisation that provided accommodation and safehouses for couriers and agents in Brussels.
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In 1940, Elizabeth Depelsenaire recruited the Belgian couple, Jean Otten, a salesman and his wife Jeanne Otten, a secretary at the Phillips Radio Company, into the sub-group.
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Albert Elizabeth Depelsenaire was deported to Germany and died in 1943.
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On 24 June 1942, Elizabeth Depelsenaire organised accommodation for Soviet agent, Willy Kruyt and his son, John William Kruyt, who parachuted in Brussels with a radioset, with the intent to contact Jeffremov.
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Elizabeth Depelsenaire was arrested again on 13 July 1942, and imprisoned at Fort Breendonk military prison in Mechelen Belgium from September to Christmas 1942.
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Elizabeth Depelsenaire took classes learning communist ideology at the central school of the Belgian communist party.
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Elizabeth Depelsenaire remarried for the third time to a Luxembourger, Alphonse Rodesch, a former customs officer.