Years of service 1943 - 1976 | Name Elza Medeiros | |
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Born October 21, 1921 ( 1921-10-21 ) Died December 8, 2009 (2009-12-09) (aged 88)Rio de Janeiro | ||
Medalha Major Elza Medeiros é entregue na CMSP
Elza Cansanção Medeiros or Major Elza (October 21, 1921- December 8, 2009) was a Brazilian Army officer and World War II veteran. She was the highest-ranking female officer in the Brazilian Army with the rank of Major. She went to Italy during the war along with the Brazilian Expeditionary Force as a nurse. She used to lecture about the Brazilian participation in World War II.
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Biography
Daughter of the sanitary doctor Tadeu de Araújo Medeiros, friend of Alberto Santos Dumont and direct assistant of Oswaldo Cruz in the campaign against yellow fever, was the first Brazilian to volunteer in the Army Health Directorate to fight in World War II, at the age of nineteen. Although she dreamed of fighting on the front line, she had to settle for being one of the seventy-three nurses in the Precursor Health Detachment of the Brazilian Expeditionary Force, since the Brazilian Army at the time did not accept women combatants.
With his parents, from Alagoas, shee learned to shoot, still in his teens. With the German housekeepers who served their family in the 1930s Copacabana, she learned Music and languages. By appointment of Arnon de Mello, father of President Fernando Collor de Mello, she joined the Brazilian Press Association. It premiered, with Fernando Torres, Nathalia Timberg and Sérgio Brito at the University Theater, with the play Dama da Madrugada. She graduated from the School of Nursing at the Red Cross. She graduated in Journalism from the National Faculty of Philosophy.
Her performance in World War II began in Alagoas, providing relief to the shipwrecked Itapagé, torpedoed on the Brazilian coast by the German submarine U-161 commanded by captain Albrecht Achilles.
During the conflict, he worked in evacuation hospitals in Italy, far from the front, in twelve-hour shifts, no soldier having died in his arms. She served as Liaison Officer and Chief Nurse in 7th Station Hospital in Livorno. With the end of the conflict, she was dismissed shortly after returning to the country, and begun to working at Banco do Brasil.
In 1957, the women were reconvened and could become military men. Dona Elza returned promptly, continuing to work as a Nurse. Even though she worked at the National Intelligence Service of Brazil (SNI), she never thought about abandoning her military career.
She graduated in Journalism, History of the Americas, Psychology, Parapsychology, Tourism and Human Relations. With knowledge of mechanics, sculpture, painting and tapestry, she traveled the world twice, she was in Antarctica, he learned to fly ultralights at the age of sixty.
She founded and directed two magazines and signed several columns in newspapers of Rio de Janeiro and Recife, having written three books on her participation in the Second World War. She also presented numerous papers at military medicine congresses, with special emphasis on Suggestions for the creation of a Women's Auxiliary Corps for the Armed Forces, the basis for opening the Brazilian Armed Forces to women's participation.
Shee was a member of the Alagoas Academy of Culture, when he dedicated himself to the preservation of FEB's photographic memory.
She is the most decorated woman in Brazil.
Elza Cansanção Medeiros died on December 8, 2009, in Rio de Janeiro.[1]