Élisabeth Le Port

Élisabeth Le Port (9 April 1919 - 14 March 1943) was a member of the French Resistance in the Indre et Loire department in west-central France. She was denounced for publishing an underground newspaper and she died in a concentration camp.

Early life Élisabeth Marcelle Marthe Le Port was born on 9 April 1919 in Lorient, Morbihan. She was the daughter of Marie-Thérèse Gloton and Marcel Le Port, a 24-year-old railwayman and fitter at Établissements maritimes du port de Lorient. The family moved to Indre et Loire when her father found a job with the Compagnie du chemin de fer de Paris à Orléans (the Paris to Orléans railway company).

Elisabeth Le Port grew up in Saint Symphorien, north of Tours. Her younger brother Jack was born there on 9 June 1925. A gifted musician, she won a conservatoire prize for piano.

Second World War Revolted by the Vichy government's policy of collaboration with the invading Nazis, Le Port joined the Union of Communist Students. She soon became responsible for the clandestine newspaper La lanterne, which had communist leanings, and printed it illegally in her school using a mimeograph. She wrote: "We must wage a fierce struggle against the enemy so that he can feel the ground burning under his feet".

On 18 June 1942, Le Port was arrested by the Gestapo at her school. Railway workers picked it up and posted it to her parents in Tours.

She was registered in Birkenau on 27 January 1943 under the number 31786, which was immediately tattooed on her left forearm. On 3 February, she returned on foot to Auschwitz with other prisoners, in rows of five.

In March 1943, exhausted by dysentery, yet helped and supported by her comrades, she could no longer work. She was severely beaten and entered the Revier sick bay, where she died on 14 March 1943. Her parents learned of her death on 14 May 1943 from the German Kommandantur of Tours.

Commemoration On 17 June 1945, the municipality of Saint-Christophe-sur-le-Nais organised a remembrance event in Élisabeth Le Port's honour. Her parents were present. La Nouvelle République du Centre-Ouest reported the event. Speakers at the ceremony included Georges Girard, the town's mayor; Paul Racault, on behalf of the Libération-Nord network, the school inspector, Héléna Fournier, who had been repatriated from Auschwitz just six weeks previously, and the préfet of Indre-et-Loire. A marble plaque was affixed to the wall of the classroom where she had taught. The plaque refers to an execution by shooting, which is untrue.

In 2010, in Saint-Christophe-sur-le-Nais, l'association Histoire et Patrimoine organised a tribute to Élisabeth Le Port, which was attended by around a hundred people.

A street bears her name in Saint-Christophe-sur-le-Nais. There are commemorative plaques in Place Velpeau, Tours, and in her former classroom in Saint-Christophe-sur-le-Nais.