»Don’t tell anybody that your name’s Rachmil!«
The children ‘s rescue

Only now the in Belgium living Jews realized the scope of lots of horror-reports. Just now, that they have been personally tackled by the perfidious brutality and death, they abruptly realized that they had to prepare themselves for the very worst. The national socialistic oppressors did not stop before anyone or anything, randomly pulling infants with mothers, little children, fragile old men and pregnant women on the back of lorries. Jammed together and stipate they were taken to Mecheln, often in the cover of dawn, as eyewitnesses were not wanted. In the barrack Dossin all their valuables, like jewellery and money, were robbed, one assigned them a card index number, undressed them to the skin, searched and finally led them to a sweaty smelling, primitive dormitory. Reality there taunted every fantasy. For hundreds of debased humans, there were about ten latrines available, in a tin pot there was only thin soup and the straw mattresses had not only already been used, but were full of lice. In the waiting room of death there were only vermin. Intercession wasn’t there. For nobody anymore. Now the unsuspecting Belgian Jews began to understand. They organised themselves. And they disappeared, if at all still possible, to illegality.

“It sounds absurd“, commented the Jewish historical Maxime Steinberg, “but it was like that. There is no rational explanation. Only in summer 1942, after the first deportation trains were rolling, the Jews realised that they had to organise themselves and submerge.” Only after death was on the brink.
During the 100 days between August, 4 and October, 31 1942 Kurt Asche and his companions tore more than 17,000 Jews into stinking deportation trains in direction to Poland. Until then they were hit by the battue totally unprepared. But from October, 31 1942 until September 1944 the Nazi-functionaries were less successful. “Only” another 8,000 men, women and children walked into their trap.
Lots claimed help now, found a hideout in a scrubby housing, and hid themselves in the countryside, in convents and orphanages, in boarding schools and with Belgian Families. Parents, who had decided for a “life on the run”, however knew that they had to find another solution for their children. Whereto with the children? At least the children should be saved. Many children were saved. Despite horrible raids. Jews and non-Jews, Belgian members of the resistance, social workers, and idealists, people of all walks of lifer were shaking each others hands. The CDJ, Comité de Défense Juif, set everything about to save Jewish children of deportation and the Nazi’s grasp. The members of the resistance Maurice and Estera Heiber, a Jewish married couple, whose kids also were hidden at an unknown spot, established an illegal office in Brussels. In the same boat was the Jewish social worker Yvonne Jospa. Together with committed Belgians they were looking for housings and cover addresses for the affected children. “Madame Pascal” – the pseudonym of Estera Heber – organized consulting-hours, passed on information, got the necessary money for the housings, supplied food ration cards and was the contact-point for desperate parents on search for rescue.
An arduous and extremely dangerous endeavour. About this town-office’s existence only knew three people until the end of the war: Maurice and Estera Heiber and Yvonne Jospa. In the constantly growing fear of being shadowed by the Gestapo and finally being discovered, “Madame Pascale” invented her coded notebooks. In the first one was the real name and the child’s code number listed, in the second the code number with a wrong name and in the third the wrong name with the code number and the address, where the child was hosted. In the fourth register they only had listed the addresses with the code numbers. These four registers have been separately stored. Only when all registers have been put together you could ascertain where exactly the child stayed. The “Carents” made history later on and today are silent witnesses of selfless people’s heroic acting.
The underground operation faced almost unsolvable tasks. How do you procure loving parents that it is better to part from their children? Without any indication or description of the organized hideout, without message, where the orphanage was or the foster-parents lived? For even the slightest hint could mean death.
There happened heart rending scenes. Mothers were crying and clung still at the last minute to their children, fathers stiffened in their emotions. Nobody really wanted to give their children into foreign hands. Without knowing whereto. From October 1942 the raids heaped. SS-men in full gear, in high boots, often a dog at their side, totally surprising closed off whole streets, ordered to save “their” world of the Jewish pest. There was hardly any escape. Unless over backyards, isolated alleys or little side streets. “Weakness and charity for the mourning and desperate Jewish parents meant inadvertent deportation and death”, made the Belgian member of the resistance Andrée Geulen plain. The at this time 20-years old Belgian primary school teacher picked the children, for the underground operation, from the Jewish families up.
Sometimes parents had to pack the puny little bag for their children within 24 hours. This had to be brought away first, be it to the station or a hideout. They did not want to be seen with child and suitcase. This would have been too conspicuous. There was no minute to lose. If the time was not enough, the young courageous lady would have taken the children immediately, without big preparations, and brought it at first to the Salvation Army. There they were save until an appropriate housing was found.
The little blonde Esther was now called Susanne from one to the other day, and for the happy Nathan from Antwerp the organisation was desperately looking for Flemish foster-parents, because the tot only spoke Flemish except Yiddish. “Once I took a hardly six months old baby out of the cradle. The chubby cherub still felt like warm and cosy. The mother shouted and snivelled. Little children did not know what was happening to them. Older in contrast clung frightened to the parents. We lived all along in the fear, the little Sarah or the Yiddish singing Samuel were not able to remember their wrong name and could be asked at a raid. No child gave away itself. Like a miracle.”

How must it have been for a six year old girl if they beat into her head : “ Never tell anybody that your name is Rahel” and “ Never tell anybody that you are Jewish, otherwise you will have to die.”
“During the war they called me Monique and I sometimes did not react.” a survivor told us. Because of that they thought I was somewhat retarded. “But I really did not know who I was anymore. I was completely divided.” Yvonne Jospa, the committed benefactress, called it instinct of self preservation and survival instinct. Spontaneous reactions during the war.
With the help of joint administrators faked identity cards were produced, Jewish children got a Belgian, Flemish or French name, a “real” faked identity card with a “real sounding” faked name. Apfelbaum became Applemans, Steinberg became van Steenbergen. That way you could apply for food ration cards and actually get them. For safety reasons they even requested a catholic certificate of baptism for every immersed child.
Once a moth the cost for accommodation, food, pharmaceuticals, necessary clothes and for the current post were paid by members of the underground organisation. Every information, name, address or message needed to be memorised. It was not be allowed, under any circumstances, to carry any documents. Once a month they collected letters from children for their parents. Names and addresses were crossed out. Often these letters could not be sent anymore. And then everybody knew that the parents got caught by a raid and were deported. “ That were horrible moments” , said Andrée Geulen. “The younger children moved on. They


were able to forget. But the older ones revolted. They wanted to come out of their hiding place and fight as a guerilla in the underground.”
This life, separated from parents, with a heavy burden of a wrong identity and always being in fear of getting discovered embossed these children. They survived. But how does this “survival” look like!? After all this years under inhuman physical pressure. And with the knowledge of fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters, relatives or friends cold blooded murder. In April 1943 almost 900 Jewish children were littered by the CDJ, Comité de Défense Juif, under a wrong name all over the country. In every holiday camp Jewish children lived under Belgian children. They lived an “almost” usual life, protected by informed directors and trainers, near Dworp and Braine- L’Alleud (Brabant), Leffe-Lez-Oinant (Namur), van Banneux (Luxemburg) and Lauwe (West-Flandern) and many other places. Jewish families, who needed a place for their child, could ask the Informationsdienst der Katholischen Arbeiterjugend JoefKAJ (information service o f the catholic working youth) also the KAJ- Dienst “Bauernhilfe für Stadtskinder” (countrymen help for city- kids) tried to help.

Whether Laja Menen knew where she could have asked for help in her misery? Surely.
She as well beat into her little sons head that he must keep his secret, “Never tell anybody that your name is Rachmil!” He was not supposed to tell anybody his name, where he lived or give any information about his mother. If somebody asked him he should answer politely in French.

German was off-limits. And Yiddish more than ever! The east-European Jewess got her son baptised as Rudi. A first step of desperation. The baptism took place in the church St Mariapfarrei (St mary parish) in Schaerbeek. After they moved many times they ended up in this Brussels district. In that area pastor Georges Meunier of St Johannes- and St Nikolas church and some of his parishioner took care of the misery of many homeless Jews who found a hiding place near his church.
Already at the 29. September 1941, as one of the first, pastor Meunier sent the Belgian cardinal van Roey a message to Mecheln, explained the situation of his converted Jews and representing the idea that the Belgian authority should make sure that these Jews could live in peace and without the bullying of the Nazi bureaucrats. A special stamp on the ID, a cross or a member card of a certain parish could possibly save their lives. But the cardinal thought, as well as the rest of the catholic commune, that these “nonbeliever” indeed protested against the persecution of Jews, but not against the persecution of Catholics in Russia, Spain and Mexico. Van Roey, who avoided every contact with Hitler during the whole occupation, Nationalsozialismus was against his principles so he nevertheless tried to help Jews. His effort was pretty ineffective, as well as kings Leopold the 3rd efforts.




Only the cabinet of the Belgian Queen mother Elisabeth scored more effect, although you can not really call it success. But at first it looked like it. The queen, widow of “Soldatenkönig” (soldier king) Albert the 1st and opinionated daughter of the eye specialist Herzog Karl Theodor of Bavaria, ones Wittelbachers, seemingly was able to melt the “Führer” and achieved that Jewish families should not be seperated anymore, Belgian Jews should not be deported anymore and in the collective point in Mecheln visitors should be allowed. But it was all a bluff. Actually Jews who were Belgian could “temporary” escape the deportation. As long as the Belgian employment market was tight and the population did not have to be senseless unsettled. At the end of June 1943 the barriers were closed. Even Belgian Jews were “evacuated” to Auschwitz, the most efficient creation to kill human beings of the history, in which millions of European Jews reached their end in a livestock wagon.

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