Elisabeth Meynard Maxwell

Elisabeth Jenny Jeanne Maxwell (; 11 April 1921 – 7 August 2013) was a French-born researcher of the Holocaust who established the journal Holocaust and Genocide Studies in 1987. She was married to publishing tycoon Robert Maxwell from 1945 until his death in 1991 when the family soon came under scrutiny for his business dealings, especially his responsibility for the Mirror Group pension scandal. Later in life, she was recognized for her work as a proponent of Interfaith dialogue and received several awards including an honorary fellowship from the Woolf Institute at Cambridge. Early life Maxwell was born Elisabeth Jenny Jeanne Meynard in La Grive, near Saint-Alban-de-Roche, France, to Louis "Paul" Meynard and Colombe (née Petel) Meynard. Paul Meynard was a descendant of Protestant Huguenot aristocracy whose distant lineage included kings of France, while Colombe Meynard was a Roman Catholic whose marriage to a Protestant resulted in her excommunication. Her father Paul owned a silk-weaving factory and was the mayor of the village. She had one sibling, an older sister, Yvonne. Her parents sent her to England at age nine to attend the convent of Our Lady of Compassion at Acocks Green in Birmingham. In 1932, she returned to France. Meynard studied law at the Sorbonne. Family In September 1944, after the Liberation of Paris, she met Czechoslovakian-born British Army Captain Robert Maxwell, while working as an interpreter for the Welcome Committee, which introduced French people to allied officers; they married on 15 March 1945. She then worked as his secretary and assistant in London as he established his publishing empire. The Maxwells had nine children: Michael, Philip, Ann, Christine, Isabel, Karine, Ian, Kevin and Ghislaine. All of Maxwell's children were delivered by her sister Yvonne, a gynecologist, in Maisons-Laffitte, France. Two of the children died in childhood: daughter Karine died in 1957, at age three, from leukemia, and son Michael entered a coma following a car crash in 1961; he died six years later without regaining consciousness. At first, the family lived on a budget, but later moved into a mansion at Broomfield, Esher. Starting in 1960, the family lived at Headington Hill Hall where the offices to Robert Maxwell's Pergamon Press were also located.