Rescue resistance

Many Jewish individuals in Belgium resisted their persecution, deportation and murder. Some of the strategies they used were:

refusing to wear the obligatory “yellow star”, so making it more difficult for Germans to arrest their victims out on the streets.
ignoring the request to report to Mechelen for work (and the subsequent) deportation, as many did. Only 4,023 out of the 12,000 people who were sent requests actually came to Mechelen.
leaving their homes in order to hide. When the raids reached their peak in the summer of 1942, so many persecuted people had left their homes that the military administration reported this to Berlin as a mass phenomenon.
marrying non-Jewish Belgians, which gave temporary protection from deportation.
showing false papers which could mean survival during a raid.
fleeing to Switzerland or Spain via France, as some did.

The historian Insa Meinen has researched the life stories of the deportees of the 21st deportation on 31 July 1943 and concluded that most of these people had spent months actively trying to escape the Germans before they were arrested.

Yvonne Jospa, born 1910 in Bessarabia, died 2000 in Brussels, was one of the founders of the Comité de Défense des Juifs (Jewish Defense Committee, CDJ). As a sociologist and social worker she knew many doctors and sanatoriums and used her contacts to accommodate Jewish children.

Yvonne Nevejean, born 1910 in Gentbrugge/Belgium, died 1987 in Brussels, was the director of the National Children’s Fund l‘Oeuvre Nationale de l‘Enfance (ONE). She made its infrastructure and her contacts available to the Comité de Défense des Juifs (Jewish Defense Committee, CDJ) in order to save children.

Suzanne Moons-Lepetit (Brigitte), born in 1901, died in 1946, established contacts with Catholic institutions that could hide children.

Estera Heiber managed the child rescue operation and developed the system of coded lists of children’s names, aliases and hiding places.

Ida Sterno (Jeanne), born in 1902, died in 1964. She led a group of young Jewish women who picked up children from their parents, took them into hiding placesand regularly sent money and clothing for the hidden children to the foster families. Sterno was arrested by the Gestapo in May 1944.

Andree Geulen, born in Brussels in 1921, who died in Ixelles in 2022, was one of the women who brought children to foster families.

Chaim Perelmann (1912-1984) led a legal existence as a leading employee of the Association des Juifs en Belgium (Association of Jews in Belgium, AJB) and was at the same time an important activist of the Comité de Défense des Juifs (Jewish Defense Committee, CDJ).

Maurice Heiber led a legal existence as a leading employee of the Association des Juifs en Belgium (Association of Jews in Belgium, AJB) and was at the same time an important activist of the Comité de Défense des Juifs (Jewish Defense Committee, CDJ).

The CDJ and its Network (Comité de Défense des Juifs/Jewish Defense Committee, CDJ)

Organised resistance to the deportation of the Jewish population was provided by the Comité de Défense des Juifs (Jewish Defense Committee, CDJ). It was initiated by the couple Hertz and Yvonne Jospa and was established in September 1942 under the umbrella of the Independence Front (FI). Jewish and non-Jewish activists financially supported nearly 5,000 Jewish adults who were in hiding until the end of the war and hid about 3,500 Jewish children. These actions were mainly financed by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.

The members of the CDJ were specifically addressing families and persuading them to hand over their children to their care. They established a network of institutions and host families to receive the children. As well as help given by private families, doctors were helping in hospitals and sanatoriums. Teachers in children’s homes as well as pastors, monks and nuns were also taking in persecuted Jewish children to their institutions and monasteries.

Mayors and community representatives from over 200 Belgian communities supported the rescue operations by supplying the CDJ with forged authentic ID cards, and food ration cards for the people in hiding.

The militant Jewish resistance was also acting against the deportation. Jewish partisans attacked the the Association des Juifs en Belgique (Association of Jews in Belgium, AJB) office in Brussels on the day before the AJB was due to hand over to the Gestapo a “Judenkartei” (Jewish card index) which it had drawn up. They managed to burn part of the file. ÄW