Andree geulen biography sample

Andrée Geulen

Belgium

Andrée Geulen was teaching in a school in Brussels, when one day in the summer of 1942  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.

This first close encounter with the persecution of the Jews convinced Geulen that she had to act. While continuing to teach, she became a central activist in the clandestine Comité de Défence des Juifs (Jewish Defense Committee), where Jews and non-Jews joined forces to hide Jewish children and save them from deportation and death. She had the difficult task of convincing parents to part from their children so that they could be brought to hiding places; she would then undertake the perilous transfer of the children to the families that would be hiding them. She continued to teach at Free biography sample!