(Jewish Group) Andre Geulen, Belgian woman who rescued hundreds of Jewish children, dies at 100

[Behind the Aegis]

Andrée Geulen-Herscovici, a Belgian woman who rescued some 300 Jewish children from the Nazis during the Holocaust, is embraced by Henri Lederhandler, one of the children she rescued, in front of the exhibit on her efforts in the museum of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem, April 18, 2007. (David Silverman/Getty Images)


The hardest part, Andrée Geulen said, was not hiding from the Nazis, or even confronting them; it was separating Jewish children from their parents.

Geulen, a Belgian woman who rescued hundreds of Jewish children as part of the Belgian underground, died in Brussels on May 31 at 100. Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, recognized her as a Righteous Among the Nations in 1989.

In later years she said her most agonizing memories were wrenching children, some as young as five days, from their parents.

“Taking children that way, from a mother who has just given birth, is terrible,” The Washington Post quoted Geulen as telling Anne Griffin, a historian of the Belgian resistance. “Getting onto a train with Jewish children, knowing that the Germans could also get on, that didn’t frighten me. But to tear a child away from his mother, and not tell her where we were taking him, and to have her cry and cry, ‘Tell me, at least, only tell me where you’re going to take him!'”

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