1. Righteous Among The Nations
Andrée Geulen
Righteous Among The Nations

2. Andrée Geulen-Herscovici was born in September 6, 1921
Andrée Geulen-Herscovici was born in September 6, She is a Belgian woman who, with others, rescued approximately 3,000Jewish children during the Holocaust.
In 1942, at the age of 18, Andrée Geulen began teaching at a local school. This was the year during which the Nazis occupied Brussels. 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.

3. How it all started
Geulen became engaged in rescue after meeting Ida Sterno, a Jewish member of the clandestine organization Comité de Défence des Juifs – Jewish Defense Committee – who needed a non-Jewish partner who would help her accompany Jewish children to their hiding places. Geulen was given a code name – Claude Fournier – and was told to leave her parents’ home and move to the boarding school where she was teaching. The Gaty de Gamont School was deeply involved in hiding Jewish children. At the initiative of the headmistress, Odile Ovart, twelve Jewish students were harbored at the school.
For more than two years, Andrée collected children and moved them to Christian families and monasteries. She made sure that the families were able to take the children in. She continued to visit them and looked after their needs. In secret, she kept a record of the original names and assumed identity of hundreds of children in hiding, many of whom never saw their parents again.

4. The raid
In May, the school was raided in the middle of the night by the Germans. It is suspected that the raid was the result of denunciation. The students were brutally woken up, dragged out of bed in order to have their identities checked. The timing was well chosen. It was during Pentecost – all non-Jewish students were spending the holiday with their families at home, while the Jewish children who had nowhere to go stayed behind at school. The Jewish children were arrested, and the teachers interrogated. Andrée Geulen didn't show any fear and when the German asked her if she wasn't ashamed to teach Jews, she brazenly responded: 'Aren't you ashamed to make war on Jewish children?'.

5. 1944
The incident did not deter Geulen from continuing her illegal work. On the contrary. As she left school that night, she went to tell all the Jewish students she knew of the raid and warned them of returning to school. Her involvement with rescue got deeper and she now embarked on a clandestine existence. Geulen rented an apartment under her false name, and shared it with Ida Sterno. Contact with the rescue organizations was maintained through secret post office boxes, one was located in an antique shop.
“Ida and I went to pick up the children from the parents who turned to us for help. We told the parents to prepare a suitcase, and that we would return in a day or two…  I still weep when I think of the times when I had to take children from their parents, especially children aged 2-3, without being able to tell the parents where I was taking their children.”

6. In May 1944 Ida Sterno was arrested and imprisoned in Malines camp and Geulen had to go into hiding. She nevertheless visited Sterno in Malines using an assumed name and continued their work until the very last moment. 
When going out on a mission, she would commit the names and addresses to memory, but in secret, she kept a record of the original names and assumed identity of hundreds of children in hiding, many of whom never saw their parents again.
“I think when you feel you’re doing something absolutely necessary, fear is in the background. You don’t really think about it”

7. Upon liberation, Geulen kept busy, working in a reverse direction - to fetch the children and return them to their families.
In 1989, Andrée Geulen was recognized as a Righteous Among the Nations.
“Everything I am today I owe to that period of my life, those three years.”

8. TEACHER: Cynthia Mauas
CHIARA
6 DISEÑO
2015
TEACHER: Cynthia Mauas