Hortense Clews

Hortense Daman-Clews (; 12 August 1926 – 18 December 2006) was a member of the Belgian Resistance during World War II.

Early years Born as Hortense Daman to parents Jacques and Stephanie Daman in the Belgian town of Leuven (Louvain in Belgium) in 1926 where her mother ran a grocery shop.

Her brother François was then 26 and in the Belgian army. When Germany invaded, he was working for the Red Cross as a cover for his work in the Belgian Army of Partisans, part of the larger network of the Belgian Resistance. Hortense began helping her brother François with his work with the Belgian Resistance, helping Allied servicemen evade capture.

Hortense mainly worked as a courier, which involved carrying messages, explosives and weapons beneath the upper layer in her cycle pannier while pretending to be carrying out grocery deliveries for her mother. Though Hortense was not discovered during this mission, despite riding the train in close quarters with German officers, she would not be so fortunate in the future.

Betrayal and arrest On 14 February 1944, the Gestapo raided the family home after someone informed on the family's resistance work. She was sentenced to death without trial and moved to the Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany with her mother; her father was sent to Buchenwald concentration camp.

Concentration camp inmate At Ravensbrück, Hortense was subjected to experiments including infecting her leg with gangrene (the German doctors deciding not to amputate) and attempted sterilisation. also a prisoner there. Szabo did not survive the war.

Post-war At the end of the war, Hortense and her mother were taken under the protection of the Swedish Red Cross and reunited with her father and her brother.

In 1946, she met and married Sydney Clews, a staff sergeant in the British Army; they eventually settled in Newcastle-under-Lyme in Staffordshire. Sixteen years later, despite the experiments that had been carried out at Ravensbrück, she gave birth to daughter Julia and, seven years later, son Christopher.

Legacy Hortense received the top awards of the Belgian government for her service. In 1989, Mark Bles wrote her biography titled Child at War.

Death Hortense Daman Clews died in Newcastle-under-Lyme, England in 2006, aged 80.