Andrée Geulen-Herscovici

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Andrée Geulen-Herscovici was teaching in a school in Brussels, when one day in the summer of 1942 some of her students arrived at school with the compulsory yellow star sewn on their clothes. Having her students marked and humiliated in this way enraged Geulen, and she instructed the entire class – Jews and non-Jews alike - to wear aprons to school, so as to cover the yellow stars.

This first close encounter with the persecution of the Jews convinced Geulen that she had to act. While continuing to teach, she became a central activist in the clandestine Comité de Défence des Juifs (Jewish Defense Committee), where Jews and non-Jews joined forces to hide Jewish children and save them from deportation and death. She had the difficult task of convincing parents to part from their children so that they could be brought to hiding places; she would then undertake the perilous transfer of the children to the families that would be hiding them. She continued to teach at the Gaty de Gamont School, where twelve Jewish students were being sheltered.

In May 1943, the school was raided in the middle of the night by the Germans, and the students were brutally dragged out of bed in order to have their identities checked. The Jewish children were arrested, and the teachers interrogated. When asked by one of the Germans if she wasn\"t ashamed to teach Jews, Andrée Geulen bravely retorted: \"Aren\"t you ashamed to make war on Jewish children?\".

Andrée Geulen-Herscovici rescued almost 1000 Jewish children during the Holocaust.

Source: Yad Vashem