Andrée Geulen-Herscovici

Andrée Geulen-Herscovici (born 6 September 1921) is a Belgian educator and philanthropist who, with others, rescued almost 1,000 Jewish children[1] during the Holocaust.

Righteous
Among the Nations
Notable individuals
By country

Biography

In 1942, Andrée Geulen was working as a schoolteacher in Brussels when the Gestapo arrived to arrest the Jewish children. She decided to join Jewish rescue organization Comité de Défense des Juifs. For more than two years, she moved Jewish children to live with Christian families and monasteries. She would continue to visit them and care for their needs. By keeping a secret record of the children's true identities, after the war she attempted to reunite them with their families if any survived.[2]

In 1989, Andrée Geulen-Herscovici was recognized with the honorific Righteous Among the Nations, and on 18 April 2007, she was granted honorary Israeli citizenship in a ceremony at Yad Vashem, as part of the Children Hidden in Belgium During the Shoah International Conference.[3] Upon accepting the honor, Geulen-Herscovici said, "What I did was merely my duty. Disobeying the laws of the time was just the normal thing to do."[4]

She turned 100 on 6 September 2021.[5]

References
  1. Melissa Weiss "Andrée Guelen Herscovici, Belgium", The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation; accessed 22 March 2022.
  2. "Their Fate Will Be My Fate Too…": Teachers Who Rescued Jews During the Holocaust, An online exhibition by Yad Vashem. Retrieved 11 September 2014.
  3. "Belgian Who Rescued 300 Children to Receive Honorary Citizenship at Yad Vashem Ceremony Tomorrow", Yad Vashem, 17 April 2007.
  4. Aron Heller Woman honored for saving kids from Nazis, Associated Press, 18 April 2007.
  5. "Andrée Geulen, l'institutrice bruxelloise qui a sauvé des milliers d'enfants juifs pendant la guerre, fête ses 100 ans". Medias De Bruxelles. 6 September 2021. Retrieved 12 September 2021.
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