Feisty Female Friday: Andrée Guelen Herscovici

The FFF this week is Andrée Guelen Herscovici.

Andrée was born in Belgium and at the age of 18, she began teaching at a local school, the same year the Nazis occupied Brussels.

She witnessed some of her students being forced to wear yellow stars, branded not as children but as targets. The very next day, Andrée quietly ordered every child in her class, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, to wear identical aprons with yellow stars, erasing the Nazi-imposed divisions and making them simply children again.

That small act of rebellion was only the beginning. At her school, Andrée also noticed that children were disappearing from her class and soon found out that many had been taken to concentration camps because they were Jewish. This angered her and together with another women, they took nearly 1000 young children from their school to other parts of the country and placed them safely with a non-Jewish families.

Andrée soon joined the resistance and continued her work to hide more Jewish children from the Nazis, persuading their parents to send the children into hiding in safe homes, knowing full well that many might never reunite. She even sheltered a dozen children right in her own school, teaching and smiling as though life were normal.

Andrée never sought praise or medals, just chose every day to stand on the side of humanity. She said that her experiences during the WWII made her the person that she was for the rest of her life.

She lived to be 100 and died in Brussels at the age of 100. Her life was defined by breathtaking courage, defiance, compassion, and an apron that quietly stood against an empire of terror.