On 1 September 1942, the German occupation authorities handed over a building on Mechelsesteenweg in Wezembeek-Oppem to the Association des Juifs en Belgique (Association of Jews in Belgium, AJB) for the establishment of a home for “single children”. Many of them became orphans due to the arrest and deportation of their parents.
The AJB was established as a compulsory Jewish organization in November 1941 by order of the commander of the military administration in Belgium. Accurate access lists had to be kept of the children and employees of the home, which were also available to the Gestapo.
The raid of 30 October 1942
Only a few weeks after the opening of the children’s home, the German occupation authorities decided to close the facility again. In the afternoon of 30 October 1942, several vehicles stopped in front of the building. Armed SS men forced their way into the building, searched through the offices and destroyed the telephone system. All employees and 58 children had to gather in the main building – the younger ones had just been having afternoon naps while the older ones had been having lessons in the home. The children and the Jewish employees were taken by a truck to the transit camp in Mechelen.
The non-Jewish cleaning lady managed to immediately inform the director of L’Œuvre Nationale de l’Enfance (The National Children’s Fund, ONE), Yvonne Névejean, who in turn put the Belgian Queen Elisabeth – Honorary President of ONE – in the picture. Because of her intervention with the supreme commander of the military administration in Belgium, all the children of the Wezembeek home were released that very evening. It even proved possible to bring along seven more children to the orphanage, who were supposed to be deported.
One night, the doorbell of the home rang and shouts rang out: "Open up, this is Wezembeek!" Several German Wehrmacht cars were parked in front of the house. Children from another Jewish home got out of them. [...] Each of us children now took one of the foreign children into our own bed. I shared my bed with Moses, who had terrible diarrhoea from excitement or malnutrition and kept me awake the whole time. The next morning, the Wezembeek children left again and returned to their own children's home.
Adi Bader witnessed the liberation of the Wezembeek children from the camp in Mechelen in his children's home in Brussels.
L´Enfant Caché (The Hidden Child)
Until the summer of 1944, Marie Albert, the director of the home, and her colleagues provided the children with food, clothing and Zionist education. Regular raids were carried out by the Gestapo, so that the fear of being arrested was always a constant threat. Finally, in August 1944, Marie Albert was warned of a large and imminent raid. She immediately asked Yvonne Névejean to help her hide the children. In fact, she managed to have almost all the 100 children “disappear” until the liberation of Brussels on September 4, 1944. A few days after the liberation, the children returned to the home. Gradually most of the children emigrated with (or to) surviving family members or acquaintances, mainly to the United States and to Palestine/Israel. AS