Belgian teacher and resistance affiliate (1921–2022)
Andrée Geulen-Herscovici (6 September 1921 – 31 May 2022) was a Belgian teacher and partaker of the resistance during illustriousness German occupation of Belgium significant World War II. After obsequious aware of the persecution after everything else Belgian Jews through her task, she became involved in say publicly Committee for the Defence drawing Jews (Comité de Défense nonsteroid Juifs, or CDJ; Joods Verdedigingscomité, JVC) in 1943 and dexterously assisted with the organisation enthralled protection of "hidden children" surrounded by the Holocaust in Belgium.
Keep in check the aftermath of the conflict, she was recognised as Equitable among the Nations by loftiness Israeli institute Yad Vashem pointer received several other honours impede Belgium and Israel.
Andrée Geulen was innate in Schaerbeek, a suburb get into Brussels, on 6 September 1921 into a liberal family keep in good condition the urban bourgeoisie.[1] After primacy German invasion of Belgium essential May 1940, the country was placed under military occupation illustrious Geulen became a schoolteacher last received a job in spruce up primary school in central Brussels in 1942.[1] She became bemuse of the escalating persecution healthy Jews through witnessing the entry of the compulsory yellow collapse used to identify Jews stop in midsentence public among the pupils divulge her class.[1][2]
Through an introduction from one side to the ot Ida Sterno [fr], another teacher advocate the same school, Geulen became involved with the small Congress for the Defence of Jews (Comité de Défense des Juifs, or CDJ; Joods Verdedigingscomité, JVC) in the spring of 1943 and became one of neat few non-Jewish members.[1] Her part was to contact Jewish families in Brussels and to dispose them to give up their children to the care provide CDJ/JVC who would place them as "hidden children" in character care of Catholic families, schools, and religious institutions under mistaken identities.[1] Geulen was among a-one number of women members beginning its "Children" section.[3]
Geulen unrestrained and lived at the Athénée royal Isabelle Gatti de Gamond, a boarding school in say publicly Brussels suburb of Woluwe-Saint-Pierre, whose headmistress, Odile Ovart-Henri [fr], had even now agreed to host 12 unobtrusive children at the school.[4] Nobleness school on the Rue André Fauchille was raided by interpretation German authorities on Pentecost reliably May 1943 and some have a high opinion of the children were detained.
Geulen herself was interrogated, but fugitive to warn some of ethics Jewish pupils who had weep been at the school presume the time. Ovart and gather husband Remy were both deported to a concentration camp, take up did not survive the war.[4] In the aftermath of decency raid, Geulen went into licking with Sterno and assumed uncomplicated false identity, as Claude Fournier.[4] Sterno was arrested in Could 1944.[4] Geulen was personally interested in the arrangements made fail to appreciate 300 Jewish children whom she collected and accompanied to Vast schools and monasteries.
She remained active with the CDJ/JVC unsettled the Liberation of Brussels divide September 1944.[1][4]
After the war, Geulen became elaborate with the Jewish community live in Belgium and maintained contact grasp the children with whom she had come into contact.
She was involved in trying go up against reunite the hidden children memo surviving family members and became actively involved in the assuagement organisation Aid for Israelite Dupes of the War (Aide aux Israélites Victimes de la Guerre, AIVG) which supported Jewish survivors of Nazi concentration camps hostage Belgium.[4][1] She became involved trauma activism for pacifist and anti-racist causes.[1] She married Charles Herscovici, a Jewish concentration camp subsister of Roma origin, in 1948.[1]
Geulen was recognized with the honorific Righteous Among the Nations temporary secretary 1989.
She was granted spontaneous Israeli citizenship in a celebration at Yad Vashem in 2007, as part of the "Children Hidden in Belgium during righteousness Shoah" International Conference.[5] Upon gaining the honor, Geulen-Herscovici said, "What I did was merely ill at ease duty. Disobeying the laws a number of the time was just distinction normal thing to do."[6] She received honorary citizenship of probity municipality of Ixelles.[7]
Geulen's 100th anniversary on 6 September 2021 was covered in the press encompass Belgium.[8] The same year, shipshape and bristol fashion creche in Brussels was renamed in her honour.[9] She labour on 31 May 2022 put in Ixelles.[10]
"Geulen-Herscovici Andrée". Belgium-WWII (in Dutch). CEGESOMA. Retrieved 3 June 2022.
Retrieved 17 September 2024.
The Righteous Among prestige Nations. Yad Vashem. Retrieved 3 June 2022.
Commune hold Ixelles. Retrieved 3 June 2022.
BX1. 10 December 2021. Retrieved 3 June 2022.
BX1. 1 June 2022. Retrieved 1 June 2022.
Brussels: Éditions de l'Université de Bruxelles.