Identical Aprons

Not everyone was in favor if the Nazi-imposed orders that every Jewish person wear a bright yellow star with “Jude” on it to show that they were Jewish. Of course, in reality, many if not most people were against it, but they had no choice in the matter. There were a number of people who defied the orders, in various ways. One woman, a teacher named Andrée Geulen, defied the order in a rather unusual way. Teaching in Brussels in 1942, and living under the suffocating grip of Nazi occupation, the young schoolteacher made a choice that would ripple through history. When she saw some of her students being forced to wear yellow stars, which marked them not as kids but as targets, it shattered her heart. So, she devised a plan. The following day, she discreetly instructed every child in her class, both Jewish and non-Jewish, to wear matching aprons, dissolving the Nazi-enforced separations and restoring their identity as simply children. It was an ingenious plan, and it worked for a while.

That small act of defiance was just the beginning. Geulen joined the resistance, working with the Comité de Défense des Juifs to hide Jewish children in safe homes. The mission required immense courage, convincing terrified parents to send their children into hiding alone, knowing they might never reunite. She sheltered a dozen children in her own school, teaching and smiling as if life were normal. Then, in May 1943, the Gestapo raided the school. Soldiers stormed through, dragging children from their beds and interrogating Geulen. When a Nazi officer sneered, “Aren’t you ashamed of teaching Jewish children?” she shot back, “And you? Aren’t you ashamed of making war on them?” Andrée Geulen went on to save over a thousand children, never seeking recognition, simply choosing every day to stand for humanity. She lived to be 100 years old. Her life demonstrated extraordinary courage, fierce compassion, and her legacy included an apron that stood silently against an empire of terror.

After the war, Geulen stayed connected with the Jewish community in Belgium and maintained relationships with the children she had helped. She worked to reunite hidden children with surviving family members and became actively involved with the Aid for Israelite Victims of the War (Aide aux Israélites Victimes de la Guerre, AIVG), an organization supporting Jewish survivors of Nazi concentration camps in Belgium. She also engaged in activism for pacifist and anti-racist causes. In 1948, she married Charles Herscovici, a Jewish concentration camp survivor of Roma origin.

Geulen was honored as Righteous Among the Nations in 1989 and received honorary Israeli citizenship at a Yad Vashem ceremony in 2007 during the “Children Hidden in Belgium during the Shoah” International Conference. Accepting the award, Geulen-Herscovici stated, “What I did was merely my duty. Disobeying the laws of the time was just the normal thing to do.” She was also granted honorary citizenship of Ixelles. Her 100th birthday on September 6, 2021, was widely covered in Belgian media, and that year, a creche in Brussels was renamed in her honor. She passed away on May 31, 2022, in Ixelles.