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Elisabeth de Rothschild, born March 9, 1902 in Paris, France – died March 23, 1945 in Ravensbrück, Germany, was a member by marriage of the wine-making branch of the Rothschild family.
Born Elisabeth Pelletier de Chambure and known as Lily, she was a member of an aristocratic French family whose roots were in the Burgundy region.
A divorcée, in 1935, she married, as her second husband, Baron Philippe de Rothschild of the prominent Rothschild family and the owners of one of France's most famous vineyards, the Château Mouton Rothschild in Pauillac in the Médoc. They had two children:
- Philippine Pascale de Rothschild (born 1935)
- Charles Henri de Rothschild (1937-1937), born deformed and died soon after birth
Following the occupation of France by the German army during World War II, she and her husband were arrested by the Vichy government and the vineyard property seized. Philippe de Rothschild escaped and made his way to England where he joined the Free French Forces of General Charles de Gaulle. However, the Gestapo shipped Elisabeth de Rothschild to Ravensbrück, a German concentration camp located about 50 miles north of Berlin.
In 1945, with the advance of the Allied armies into Germany, and the end of the War in sight, the Germans began a massive amount of killings in the gas chamber at Ravensbrück. On March 23, 1945, only weeks before the War ended, a weakened and starving Elisabeth de Rothschild was executed.
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