Élise Rivet

Élise Rivet, also known as Mère Marie Élisabeth de l'Eucharistie (January 19, 1890, Draria, Algeria – March 30, 1945, Ravensbrück concentration camp, Germany) was a Catholic nun and World War II heroine.

[1] She worked for a time in a hair salon before joining the convent of the medical sisters of Notre Dame de Compassion in Lyon in 1912.

[2][3] After the fall of the French Third Republic to Nazi Germany in World War II, she began hiding refugees from the Gestapo and eventually used her convent to store weapons and ammunition for the Mouvements Unis de la Résistance (MUR) at the request of Albert Chambonnet.

Rivet volunteered to go to the gas chamber on March 30, 1945, in place of a mother only weeks before Germany surrendered unconditionally.

In 1999, a lecture hall at the Institut des Sciences de l'Homme in Lyon was named Salle Élise Rivet in her honor.