“Love & Legacy” is an essay series exploring how cultures commemorate loss and death, turn mourning into celebration and legacy, and legacy into activism. We invite you to carry the legacy forward: honor someone special by donating in memoriam or making a bequest to WILPF US to sustain our work. Contact plannedgiving@wilpfus.org to learn about leaving a legacy at WILPF.

The Celtic year is modeled after a transition from dark to light. Each year, Samhain is celebrated from Oct. 31 to Nov. 1, ushering in “the dark half of the year.” The holiday is said to thin the veil between worlds, allowing fantastical events like the interaction of the dead with the living.

Early records characterize Samhain as the most important Celtic holiday. The celebration was mandatory and lasted three days and three nights, often with an excess of food and alcohol. Celts believed that the holiday broke the barrier between the physical and spiritual world, allowing the living to interact with the dead. They would create offerings in the form of a feast to invite departed loved ones to sit at their table.

In Celtic paganism, death is respected and not feared. They value the wisdom that can only come with age and view death as a natural and inevitable part of the life cycle. Therefore, rebirth is also celebrated during Samhain, as it is represented by the end of the harvest and is seen as the counterpart to death in the life cycle.

Activist Legacies: Spotlight on Mary Elmes

Mary Elmes was born in Cork, Ireland, in 1908 to a wealthy family. She was able to complete her education and study Modern Languages at Trinity College in Dublin. She received a scholarship to the London School of Economics in 1931 and another one in 1936 to study international relations in Geneva. Despite the potential for a brilliant career, she forwent her studies to volunteer in war relief efforts across Europe.

Elmes’s journey in conflict began during the First World War when her family traveled to Cobh to help survivors of a torpedoed boat. She finished school but forfeited her academic future to join Sir George Young’s University Ambulance Unit and serve in the Spanish Civil War. During the conflict, Elmes was constantly on the move through volunteer work. In 1939, the Quaker humanitarian organization, American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), recruited her to run a hospital in Alicante. However, aid workers were no longer allowed in the country five months after her appointment, so she relocated with Spanish refugees to France and established aid infrastructure. 

Elmes found herself entangled in World War II when France fell to the Nazi regime in 1940. At this time, she was working for AFSC in Perpignan and Rivesaltes, where Nazis had constructed large internment camps. Elmes facilitated better camp conditions, distributed essential items to prisoners, and advocated for prisoners’ emigration to the United States, while helping to acquire the necessary paperwork for emigration. 

When Jewish children were being gathered for deportation to Auschwitz, Elmes and her colleagues snuck them into homes she had set up. Between August and October of 1942, they saved about 427 children from the Rivesaltes camp. In 1943, she was arrested by the Gestapo and served a six-month sentence. After she was released, she immediately returned to saving those she could. 

Elmes retired from the AFSC after World War II ended, married a Frenchman, and had two children. She passed away in 2002 at the age of 93. One child she saved from Rivesaltes, René Freund, told her story and facilitated her acceptance into the Righteous Among the Nations in 2013.

Leaving a Legacy: Please Consider a Gift to WILPF

We hope these stories of legacy inspire you in their many forms. Please consider donating to WILPF US in memory of someone special, or make a personal bequest to sustain our work for generations to come. Contact plannedgiving@wilpfus.org.

Sources:

https://www.history.com/articles/samhain
https://camden.rutgers.edu/news/halloweens-ghouls-ghosts-and-tricky-treats-hark-back-celtic-festival-samhain
https://time.com/5434659/halloween-pagan-origins-in-samhain/
https://www.museum.ie/en-IE/Collections-Research/Folklife-Collections/Folklife-Collections-List-(1)/Other/Emigration/Irish-Emigration-to-America
https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/paganism/holydays/samhain.shtml
https://www.holocausteducationireland.org/mary-elmes
https://www.infinite-women.com/women/mary-elmes/
https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/dover-castle/history-and-stories/fall-of-france/
https://www.quakersintheworld.org/quakers-in-action/321/Les-Secours-Quakers-relief-work-in-the-south-of-France-1939-1945
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/righteous-among-the-nations-an-irishman-s-diary-on-mary-elmes-who-saved-jewish-children-in-wartime-france-1.3225492