Jeanne Daman

Jeanne Daman (1918–1986), a hero of the Belgian Resistance during World War II, was recognized by Yad Vashem as one of the Righteous Among the Nations.

Biography As one of the non-Jewish members of the Comité de Défense des Juifs in Brussels, Belgium, she helped rescue several thousand Jewish children from the Nazis by taking them to safe home environments such as non-Jewish families and Catholic religious institutions, where the children were given new names and identities. After the war she helped to find the children so they could be returned to their families, and helped care for children who had survived the concentration camps.

When she began teaching at Nos Petits, she witnessed the mass arrest of the Jews, as well as the inhumane treatment they were receiving. This changed her life; she discovered a new purpose. Each day, she found more and more children to be missing from school; they were either being rounded up along with their families or had been placed in orphanages. The parents of the children had approached the school for help and the only possible action to prevent further identification of the Jewish children by the Nazis was to close the school.