[4] Elizabeth Depelsenaire (née Sneyers) grew up in the bourgeois milieu in Bonheiden, north of Brussels.

[1] After passing the Jury Central[a] entrance test, Depelsenaire began to study law at the Université libre de Bruxelles in Brussels.

After earning her law diploma in 1936, and graduating from the Université libre de Bruxelles, Depelsenaire began collaborating in producing the journal of the feminist, anti-fascist World Committee of Women Against War and Fascism organisation (part of World Committee Against War and Fascism).

[5] By September 1939, Depelsenaire had been recruited[6] and working in The Jeffremov Group, a Soviet espionage organisation that was based in Brussels, Belgium.

Depelsenaire was responsible for a sub-group in the organisation that provided accommodation and safehouses for couriers and agents in Brussels.

[7] Other members of the sub-group were Buntea Crupnic, a lawyer and Marthe Vandenhoeck, a courier who worked between Paris and Brussels.

[8] Depelsenaire was arrested again on 13 July 1942, and imprisoned at Fort Breendonk military prison in Mechelen Belgium[11] from September to Christmas 1942.

After a year, during the winter of 1944-195, Depelsenaire was transferred to Bützow prison in Mecklenburg, where she was liberated by the Red Army in May 1945.

By the spring of 1947, Depelsenaire was living with Franz Schneider, a former courier of the Jeffremov group, in Anderlecht, Belgium.