Elisabeta Rizea

Elisabeta Rizea (28 June 1912 – 4 October 2003) was a Romanian anti-communist partisan in the Făgăraș Mountains of northern Wallachia. After the Romanian Revolution of 1989, she became the symbol of Romania's anti-communist resistance.

After World War II, the Soviet Army imposed a Communist government in Romania. Rizea's uncle, a local leader of the National Peasants' Party, was reportedly killed by the secret police on the day of the elections, though sources disagree whether this happened in 1946 or 1948. This led Rizea's husband to join an anti-communist guerrilla group, Haiducii Muscelului, led by Colonel Gheorghe Arsenescu. Elisabeta provided the group with food and supplies.

After being released from prison, she continued to provide food and information to the anti-communist fighters in the mountains. When Arsenescu was arrested in 1961, she was again tried, declared "dușman al poporului" (enemy of the people) and sentenced to 25 years, and she was sent to a penitentiary for female political prisoners in Mislea. and was also scalped, burned, and beaten with a shovel. Upon her release from prison, she had no hair and she couldn't walk, as her knees had been destroyed by the torture.

After the fall of Communism in 1989, her story became known following an interview included in the 1992 documentary Memorialul Durerii by . In May 2001 the former King Michael I of Romania visited Rizea at her home in Nucșoara.

Legacy In a 2006 poll conducted by Romanian Television to identify the "100 greatest Romanians of all time", she came in 58th. When there was a proposal to build a monument in memory of the anti-communist resistance, Rizea's name was the first on the list, and received the most support from Romanian civic organizations. Today, one of her grandsons is a professor of differential geometry, Bogdan Suceava.

Streets in Iași, Nucșoara, Timișoara, and Voluntari are named after Rizea.