Lisa Gavrić

Lisa Gavrić (born Elisabeth Bechmann: 31 July 1907 - 22 June 1974) was an Austrian-born communist who became an Internationalist participant in the Spanish Civil War.

Subsequently, she worked on behalf of the German resistance movement with the French Résistance.

In 1927, no longer able to bear the "mendacious atmosphere" in her parents' house, she secretly "escaped" and made her way to Paris.

Paris, according to sources, was a "random" choice.

There she took lodgings in a room at the back of a house, living unregistered and working in a small manufactory.

The wages were miserable, but she was able to meet a wide range of people, including expatriates such as herself.

One of her new friends was Milan Gavrić, a communist from the recently renamed and relaunched Kingdom of Jugoslavia.

He, too, had come to Paris in a spirit of deep hostility towards his own family.

His father was a smallholder from Bosnian peasant stock who had grown prosperous as a businessman and money lender.

In Paris Milan Gavrić had ended up at the heart of a circle of friends whose principal topics of conversation were Marxism and Communism.

Lisa Bechmann was drawn into this circle: in 1929 Milan Gavrić and Lisa Bechmann were married.

Their daughter Inga was born later that year.

The family apartment became a conspiratorial meeting point for exiled Jugoslav communists who had fled their newly fascist homeland.

Nevertheless, in 1930 Milan and Lisa Gavrić moved together in the opposite direction to Jugoslavia, driven to make the move by unemployment, poverty, hunger, concern for their daughter and the lure of the illegal but nevertheless highly active Jugoslav Communist Party.

Then new constitution issued by decree in Jugoslavia during the second half of 1931 crystallised the installation of a fascist military dictatorship which in effect had, by that stage, already been in place for more than a year.

"Progressive" (antifascist) political movements were suppressed.

Communists suffered persecution.

Milan and Lisa Gavrić made their home in Bosnia, settling with their daughter in Tuzla, which was the city in which Milan had grown up.

Communist organisations were being set up in opposition to the new régime across the country.

Milan Gavrić became secretary of the Tuzla region party leadership team.

Lisa backed her husband and worked for the party.

According to one source she also acted as a point of contact between the communists in Jugoslavia and the Young Communists in Vienna.

In January 1933 the Communist groups in Tuzla and a number of other Bosnian cities and towns were betrayed to the authorities by a spy.

Members were arrested and charged with high treason.

Milan Gavrić was among those arrested and sentenced to several years of imprisonment.

He managed to escape and subsequently fought with Tito's partisans against the German occupation.

Lisa Gavrić was convicted of "communist activities" and received a ten month prison sentence.

She was later expelled from Jugoslavia and at the start of 1934 fled north with her daughter to Vienna.

Austria was also in a state of turmoil at the time.

The "Austrofascist" government had recently outlawed the Communist Party which nevertheless continued to operate.

Gavrić arrived in time for the February uprising which had its focus in the larger cities, especially Vienna.

After several unsuccessful attempts to return to Vienna, she finally managed to make the journey, using a false identity, during 1943.

In July 1944 she was arrested by the security services and deported to the women's concentration camp at Ravensbrück.

However, after acquiring a false identity and thereby identified as a foreign detainee, she was deported to Sweden during the final months of the war.

She moved in 1948 Yugoslavia where she lived out her final decades, undertaking political work in Belgrade.

Elisabeth "Lisa" Bechmann was born into a lower-middle-class family in Vienna.

Her father was a railway worker.

She and her siblings were strictly brought up.

She trained and qualified for work as a hat-maker.

Through her older sister Trude (who had attended university, but had been relegated from it on account of her "political activities"), Lisa became involved with a Vienna Young Communists group.