Elisabeth Furse

Elisabeth Furse (30 August 1910 – 14 October 2002) was a Communist activist, World War II resistance escape route organizer, and London bistro proprietress. Early life She was born Louise Ruth Wolpert in Königsberg, East Prussia (now Kaliningrad), and brought up in Berlin. Her father, Paul Wolpert, was a Russian-speaking Latvian Jew and a wealthy textile merchant. She was nicknamed "Lisl" by an aunt, from which she derived Elisabeth, the name she later adopted for herself. Political activist As a teenager she joined the Communist Party, and in her early twenties collected money in France and England to help political refugees in Germany to escape the Nazis. In 1934, she married Bertie Coker, a fellow Communist. It was a marriage of convenience for a new nationality and legal residence outside Germany, where her activities with the Communists put her at risk of arrest and execution by the Gestapo. She left the Communist movement in 1934.