When she was in her early 20s, Jeanne Daman became the unlikely headmistress of a Jewish kindergarten in German-occupied Belgium
When she was in her early 20s, Jeanne Daman became the unlikely headmistress of a Jewish kindergarten in German-occupied Belgium. Jeanne, a Roman Catholic, taught children who were banned from public education. When the Gestapo came to her school and asked for three children by name, Jeanne felt she had no choice but to comply. She dressed the children, the youngest of whom was three years old. "I put them in the truck myself, delaying the moment when the Nazis would touch them," she wrote. The children were used to lure their parents out of hiding. That day changed Jeanne. "I was anti-Nazi by conviction before. Now I wanted to strike back myself, to damage them,” she wrote. Jeanne was eventually forced to close the school because it posed too much danger for the young students who were facing deportation. After the school closed, Jeanne joined a clandestine rescue network to find hiding places for innocent children across Belgium. Later, she helped the Belgian resistanc...
