Elisabeth Eidenbenz

Wila, Switzerland, 12-06-1913 — Zurich, Switzerland, 23-05-2011

Period of activity: 1937 — 1944

Geographical classification: Europe > Swiss

Socio-cultural movements

Late modern period / Contemporary period > Socio-political movements > Republicanism

Historical milestones > Interwar period

Historical milestones > Spanish Civil War

Historical milestones > World War II

Historical milestones > Aftermath of World War II

Groups by dedication

Activists

Healthcare workers > Nurses

Educators > Teachers / Lecturers / Professors

Context of feminine creation

Women have been always affected by wars. After World War I, activities outside the home were mobilized and carried out, such as the employment of jobs in all sectors to bridge the gap left by the men called up; they also carried out health and humanitarian care; in some countries they were also on the war front.

Violetta Thurstan is one of them, who was noted for his health and other rearguard duties in World War I, the Spanish Civil War and World War II. In the field of health care, the physicians Elsie Inglis and Frances Ivens were appointed during the First World War. Surgeries Garret, Murray and Buckley were immortalized by painter Francis Dodd while operating at Endell Street Military Hospital in London. The Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service with its medicalized ambulances provided medical services on the Allied fronts. Marie Curie, supported by the Red Cross and the Women's Union of France, equipped a car with a portable X-ray apparatus and assisted wounded soldiers on the lines of combat.

After World War I, humanitarian aid continued in a destroyed Europe. Save The Children Fund was created in 1919 on the initiative of Eglantyne and Dorothy Jebb to help boys and girls without distinction between victors and vanquished.

During the Spanish Civil War, the international nature of the conflict led to international volunteers (many integrated into the International Brigades) working as doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers, war correspondents, photographers, etc. There were organizations that supported both sides; others collaborated only with the Republican side as the International Red Relief; and, for their part, in the rebel zone acted Social Auxilio founded by Mercedes Sanz-Bachiller and White Relief led by Mª. Rosa Urraca. There were women who volunteered as Elisabeth Eidenbenz herself. Other anti-fascist women in this context include Dolores Ibárruri, Margarita Nelken, Matilde Cantos, Lina Ódena, Encarnación Fuyola and Emilia Elías.

At the outbreak of the Second World War, there is again the mobilisation of women in both humanistic and fighting aspects. And Elisabeth Eidenbenz continued to do healthcare work, as did Lillian Gutteridge, Augusta Chiwy, Elsie Ott, Reba Whittle, etc.

Review

Elisabeth Eidenbenz was a teacher and nurse who founded Mothers of Elne to foster pregnant women in French refugee camps during the Spanish Civil War. Elisabeth, as head of midwives in the Red Cross and director of Mothers of Elne, assisted the birth of nearly 600 children between 1939 and 1944, when the Gestapo ordered to close her hospital.

Activities

Justifications

She was director of Mothers of Brouilla and then of Mothers of Elne, known as Swiss Mothers of Elne, a project created with the aim of helping exiled republican women from Spain to give birth and raise their children safely in France.
She defended human rights.

Biography

Elisabeth studied education and became a teacher first in Switzerland, then in Denmark. After finishing her studies, in 1937, she travelled to Burjassot (Valencia, Spain), where the International Civil Service had set up the NGO "Swiss Aid for Spanish Children", better known as "Swiss Aid". She was also stationed in Madrid as a volunteer to give food, clothes and medicine to mother, children, and the elderly during the Spanish Civil War. She also helped evacuating them to Catalonia and Valencia.

After the fall of the Spanish Second Republic, people in exile had to find refuge in French camps, where many of them died of malnutrition, disease and other miseries. Any pregnant woman was sentenced to lose her child or, even worse, to die giving birth. For that reason, Swiss Aid reorganised in Southern France to help refugees. Elisabeth was appointed director of a maternity hospital in Brouilla and, later on, a second hospital in an abandoned palace in Elne, near the refugee camps in the beaches at Roussillon (Argelès-sur-Mer, Saint-Cyprien, Le Bacarès, Rivesaltes, etc.), known as the Swiss Mothers of Elne.

At the beginning, the institution survived on voluntary donations from Europe, but after the outbreak of World War II, their funds decreased and the number of refugees from France and other European countries augmented. They were mainly young women fleeing from Nazi occupation. The maternity hospital was then forced to partner with Red Cross and to follow their neutral policies, which forbid to accept political refugees and Jews in particular. To bend this rule, Elisabeth Eidenbenz decided to falsify the identity of many women, evading the law. There were many who fell under the hands of the Gestapo; she herself was arrested once. They managed to save 400 Spanish and Catalan children and 200 Jewish children from all over Europe.

After World War II, she worked helping those whose homes were destroyed in Vienna. From 1956 on, she focused on women's professional reinsertion, worked as a teacher again, and taught many illiterate women how to read. She spent her last years in Rekawinkel, 30 km away from Vienna. The historian Assumpta Montellà collected her story in “La Maternitat d'Elna. Bressol dels exiliats”, where she interviewed Eidenbenz herself and compared her task to that of Oskar Schindler. In 2006, Generalitat de Catalunya (Catalan government) gave Elisabeth EIdenbenz the Creu de Sant Jordi Award.

Wikipedia, 16/03/2022,
https://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisabeth_Eidenbenz

Works

Bibliography

Montellà, Assumpta (2005). La maternitat d’Elna, bressol dels exiliats. Badalona: Ara llibres.

La llum D’Elna, 16/03/2022, https://www.ccma.cat/tv3/alacarta/la-llum-delna/la-llum-delna/video/5657765/

Didactic approach

In 4th ESO in History, Elisabeth Eidenbenz and the group of Maternity of Elna would be issues that would drag on most of the explanations of the Spanish Civil War and would serve as a link between the end of the sessions aimed at explaining European society in the interwar period and the origins of World War II. However, we would give a social approach to explaining the consequences of the Civil War through the events in Elna. Thus, the human consequences of World War II on the life of the rearguard would be shown once with the recourse of Maternity, in covering the arrival of non-Spanish women in Elna and the cultural transfers that occur between them.