Elisabeth de Rothschild (March 9, 1902 - March 23, 1945) was a member by marriage of the wine-making branch of the Rothschild family. Born in Paris as Elisabeth Pelletier de Chambure and known as Lili, she was a daughter of Auguste Pelletier de Chambure, mayor of Escrignelles, a member of a Catholic family whose roots were in the Burgundy region. In 1935, immediately after her divorce from her first husband, Baron Marc Edouard Marie de Becker-Rémy, a Belgian aristocrat, she married her lover, Baron Philippe de Rothschild, a member of the prominent Rothschild family and the owner of one of France's most famous vineyards, Château Mouton Rothschild in Pauillac in the Médoc. Rothschild also was a cousin by marriage of her previous husband. Lili and Philippe de Rothschild had two children:
- Philippine Mathilde Camille de Rothschild (1935-)
- Charles Henri de Rothschild (born and died 1937)
Philippe de Rothschild's late-in-life memoirs ("Milady Vine," written in collaboration with his companion, the British director Joan Littlewood) described his marriage to Lili as one of great passion but also enormous tempestuousness and despair. The couple's difficulties increased when their only son was born tragically deformed and died soon after birth. They eventually separated, and the baron's wife reverted to her maiden name. Following the German occupation of France in World War II, she and her then-estranged 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, in 1941, the Gestapo arrested Rothschild's wife on charges of attempting to cross the line of demarcation with a forged permit and sent her to Ravensbrück, a German concentration camp located about 50 miles north of Berlin. Elisabeth de Rothschild reportedly died of epidemic typhus on March 23, 1945, at Ravensbrück, though other sources, including the memoirs of Philippe de Rothschild, state that she was thrown alive into a crematory oven.
References
- Joseph Valynseele & Henri-Claude Mars, Le Sang des Rothschild, L’Intermédiaire des Chercheurs et Curieux, Paris, 2004.
