Georgette Ferreira

Georgette de Oliveira Ferreira was born in Alhandra in the Portuguese municipality of Vila Franca de Xira on 25 June 1925. A daughter of agricultural workers, she was a sister of Sofia Ferreira who, like Georgette, became a member of the Communist Party. She started working in the fields when she was 8, when living with her godparents. At the age of 16 she returned to the family home, where her mother was very ill, and became a textile worker. She joined the PCP in 1943, and in the same year organized a strike in her factory for an increase in wages, which ended up in her being dismissed. In 1945 she went underground, living clandestinely while working for the PCP and carrying out secretarial and organizational work.^[1][2][3]

On 28 August 1945, Ferreira narrowly escaped arrest when she was living with her partner, António Assunção Tavares. In 1946, she participated in the illegal 2nd Congress of the PCP, which was held in Lousã near Coimbra. She was arrested in 1949 in the town of Palmela, together with António Dias Lourenço, and held at Caxias prison near Lisbon. During her imprisonment, a stomach illness she had been suffering from worsened. She was urgently hospitalized at the Santo António dos Capuchos Hospital, from which she escaped, with outside assistance, on 4 October 1950, becoming the first woman to escape from an Estado Novo political prison. She then moved to Porto, where she lived with Clementina Amália, adopting the pseudonym of "Helena". She remained in Porto until 1952. In 1954 she was arrested for a second time, not being released until 1959. She was seriously ill while in prison.^[1][2][3][4]