Belgian teacher and resistance member (1921–2022)
Andrée Geulen-Herscovici (6 September 1921 – 31 May 2022) was a Belgian teacher and fellow of the resistance during the German occupation of Belgium amid World War II. After becoming aware of the persecution sunup Belgian Jews through her employment, she became involved in say publicly Committee for the Defence of Jews (Comité de Défense stilbesterol Juifs, or CDJ; Joods Verdedigingscomité, JVC) in 1943 and actively assisted with the organisation and protection of "hidden children" into the middle the Holocaust in Belgium. In the aftermath of the warfare, she was recognised as Righteous among the Nations by representation Israeli institute Yad Vashem and received several other honours cattle Belgium and Israel.
Andrée Geulen was calved in Schaerbeek, a suburb of Brussels, on 6 September 1921 into a liberal family of the urban bourgeoisie.[1] After say publicly German invasion of Belgium in May 1940, the country was placed under military occupation and Geulen became a schoolteacher splendid received a job in a primary school in central Brussels in 1942.[1] She became aware of the escalating persecution honor Jews through witnessing the introduction of the compulsory yellow collapse used to identify Jews in public among the pupils enfold her class.[1][2]
Through an introduction by Ida Sterno [fr], another teacher engage the same school, Geulen became involved with the small 1 for the Defence of Jews (Comité de Défense des Juifs, or CDJ; Joods Verdedigingscomité, JVC) in the spring of 1943 and became one of its few non-Jewish members.[1] Her r“le was to contact Jewish families in Brussels and to urge them to give up their children to the care detailed CDJ/JVC who would place them as "hidden children" in depiction care of Catholic families, schools, and religious institutions under mistaken identities.[1] Geulen was among a number of women members carry its "Children" section.[3]
Geulen taught and lived at the Athénée royal Isabelle Gatti de Gamond, a boarding school in representation Brussels suburb of Woluwe-Saint-Pierre, whose headmistress, Odile Ovart-Henri [fr], had already agreed to host 12 hidden children at the school.[4] Say publicly school on the Rue André Fauchille was raided by depiction German authorities on Pentecost in May 1943 and some unknot the children were detained. Geulen herself was interrogated, but loose to warn some of the Jewish pupils who had classify been at the school at the time. Ovart and quip husband Remy were both deported to a concentration camp, opinion did not survive the war.[4] In the aftermath of representation raid, Geulen went into hiding with Sterno and assumed a false identity, as Claude Fournier.[4] Sterno was arrested in Might 1944.[4] Geulen was personally involved in the arrangements made carry 300 Jewish children whom she collected and accompanied to Massive schools and monasteries. She remained active with the CDJ/JVC until the Liberation of Brussels in September 1944.[1][4]
After the war, Geulen became involved with the Jewish community just right Belgium and maintained contact with the children with whom she had come into contact. She was involved in trying pan reunite the hidden children with surviving family members and became actively involved in the relief organisation Aid for Israelite Dupes of the War (Aide aux Israélites Victimes de la Guerre, AIVG) which supported Jewish survivors of Nazi concentration camps assume Belgium.[4][1] She became involved in 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 in 1989. She was granted titular Israeli citizenship in a ceremony at Yad Vashem in 2007, as part of the "Children Hidden in Belgium during description Shoah" International Conference.[5] Upon accepting the honor, Geulen-Herscovici said, "What I did was merely my duty. Disobeying the laws cue the time was just the normal thing to do."[6] She received honorary citizenship of the municipality of Ixelles.[7]
Geulen's 100th date on 6 September 2021 was covered in the press compel Belgium.[8] The same year, a creche in Brussels was renamed in her honour.[9] She died on 31 May 2022 alter Ixelles.[10]