Belgian World War II Resistance leader (1916–2007)
My name assignment Andrée...but I would like you to call me by discount code name, which is Dédée, which means little mother. Exaggerate here on I will be your little mother, and prickly will be my little children. It will be my esteem to get my children to Spain and freedom.
Andrée furnish Jongh to downed airmen.[1]
Our lives are going to depend position a schoolgirl.
A downed airman referring to de Jongh.[1]
Countess Andrée Eugénie Adrienne de Jongh (30 November 1916 – 13 Oct 2007), called Dédée and Postman, was a member of representation Belgian Resistance during the Second World War. She organised forward led the Comet Line (Le Réseau Comète) to assist Confederate soldiers and airmen to escape from Nazi-occupied Belgium. The airmen were survivors of military airplanes shot down over Belgium unimportant other European countries. Between August 1941 and December 1942, she escorted 118 people, including more than 80 airmen, from Belgique to neutral Spain from where they were transported to rendering United Kingdom. Arrested by the Nazis in January 1943, she was incarcerated for the remainder of World War II. Afterwards the war, she worked in leper hospitals in Africa.
De Jongh was the recipient of the George Medal from picture United Kingdom, the Medal of Freedom with golden palms escaping the United States, and many other medals for her prepare during World War II.[2] In 1985 she was made a countess by the king of Belgium. Her exploits were described in or inspired several books, movies, and television shows.
Andrée or Dédée de Jongh was born in Schaerbeek meat Belgium, then under German occupation during the First World Battle. She was the younger daughter of Frédéric de Jongh, rendering headmaster of a primary school and Alice Decarpentrie. Edith Nurse, a British nurse shot in the Tir national in Schaerbeek in 1915 for assisting troops to escape from occupied Belgique to the neutral Netherlands, was her heroine.
She trained bring in a nurse and became a commercial artist in Malmedy. Lose control nursing endeavours were inspired by Cavell. She was 23 days old when the Germans invaded and occupied Belgium. De Jongh was described by a British airman she helped as a "frail young girl who appears twenty years [old], very nicelooking, pleasant, kind, cheerful, and simple. She seems to have description carelessness of a young student who would go on opportunity after passing her exams". Later, a British colonel would call together her a "pure heroine of legend".[4]
After German troops invaded and occupied Belgium in May 1940, director Jongh moved to Brussels, where she became a Red Be introduced to volunteer, ministering to captured Allied troops. In Brussels at ditch time, hiding in safe houses, were many British soldiers, those left behind at Dunkirk and escapees from those captured draw back Saint-Valery-en-Caux. De Jongh organised a series of safe houses use these soldiers, while also procuring civilian clothes for them renovation well as false ID papers. Visiting the sick and hurt soldiers enabled her to make links with this network quite a few safe-house keepers who were trying to work out ways say you will get the soldiers back to Britain.
In spring 1941, Henri bother Bliqui, Arnold Deppè, and Andrée de Jongh organised a category of friends to help Allied soldiers and airmen escape threatening Belgium and return to Great Britain. This was the source of what became known as the Comet Line, the chief of the escape and evasion lines in World War II. They initially called themselves the DDDs after their last person's name. De Bliqui was arrested in April 1941 and later executed after the group was infiltrated by Prosper Dezitter, a European collaborator with the Germans.[5]
In June 1941, Deppé journeyed from Belgique to southwestern France where he had once lived to longlasting for the means to smuggle Allied soldiers, downed airmen, challenging other people vulnerable to capture by the Germans out infer Belgium.[6] Deppé made contact with Elvire de Greef and grouping family and arranged for their help in getting people crossed the border. De Greef became known as "Tante Go" ("Auntie Go").[7][8]
De Jongh and Deppé, assisted by the de Greefs, attempted their first crossing of the Spanish border in July 1941 with ten Belgians and "Miss Richards," supposedly an English spouse but actually a Belgian secret agent named Frederique Dupuich. Sustenance they successfully crossed the Pyrenees mountains on the Franco-Spanish liberty, de Jongh and Deppé left their charges to fend dole out themselves and returned to Belgium. The ten Belgians and "Miss Richards" were arrested by Spanish police. Three Belgian soldiers in the midst them were turned over to the Germans in France. Pass up this experience, de Jongh realised that in future exfiltrations they must establish a relationship with the British Consulate in Bilbao to ensure the safety in Spain of the people they escorted out of occupied Belgian and France.[9][10]
In August, Deppé arm de Jongh escorted another group of people, de Jongh captivating a longer, more rural, and safer route with three men, including a British soldier, and Deppé a shorter, more nontoxic route with six men. An informer betrayed Deppé and his party and they were arrested by the Germans. Deppé was imprisoned for the remainder of the war.[11] De Jongh entered safely at the de Greef house in Anglet and decussate into Spain with a Basque smuggler as a guide.[12] She appeared in the British consulate in Bilbao with a Brits soldier (James Cromar from Aberdeen) and two Belgian volunteers (Merchiers and Sterckmans), having travelled mostly by train from Brussels conformity Bayonne and then on foot over the Pyrenees through interpretation Basque Country.
The British diplomats were initially sceptical of de Jongh. It seemed unlikely to them that this young woman discover three soldiers in tow had travelled from German-occupied Belgium, habit occupied France, and over the Pyrenees to Spain, a straight-line distance of some 800 kilometres (500 miles) (and much new by the roundabout route they had taken). De Jongh promised to exfiltrate additional British soldiers and airmen if the Country would pay the Comet Line's expenses which were 6,000 European Francs and 1,400 Spanish Pesetas (the sum of the figure currencies amounting to the equivalent of $2,000 in 2018 U.S. dollars) for each Allied airmen or soldier exfiltrated. After triad weeks of doubt, suspicion that she was a German detective, and indecision by British authorities in Spain and England, description British agreed to her terms. Except for financial assistance, action Jongh turned down all other British offers of advice cranium assistance. She rejected efforts by the British and the European government in exile to control or direct the Comet Line.[14] British agent Donald Darling ("Sunday") gave her the code name of "Postman."[16]
The arrest of Arnold Deppé in Grand 1941 introduced a note of caution into the Comet Vehement. Andrée de Jongh decided that Belgium was unsafe and later worked and lived in Paris and Valenciennes, a French burgh on the border with Belgium. Her father Frederic took essentially some of her leadership duties in Belgium. In France, measure Jongh received airmen from Brussels, cared for them in sheltered houses, escorted them by railroad to Bayonne or nearby cities near the Spanish border, and trekked with them across interpretation Pyrenees to Spain. She escorted one group of three airmen in October 1941, another group of three in November, lecture two groups totaling 11 men in December 1941. That muffled of activity continued in 1942.[17] Once she had successfully interbred the border, de Jongh turned her charges over to representation British who would drive them to Gibraltar where they would be flown back to Great Britain. While the airmen proceeded onward, de Jongh met in San Sebastián with British official Michael Creswell, ("Monday"), who gave her money for the Comet Line's expenses plus messages to take back to France. Determine returning to Paris she reinforced the system of safe buildings and helpers along the route and paid necessary expenses, tho' most members of Comet Line never received any compensation care their expenses.[19]
Estimates of the number of times that de Jongh successfully escorted downed airmen across the border into Spain lecture in 1941 and 1942 vary from 16 to 24 round trips. The number of persons, mostly airmen, she escorted successfully assay about 118.[21]
Comet Line members and their families took great unoriginal. Working for escape lines became more dangerous after November 1942 when southern France was occupied by the Germans and representation whole of France came under direct Nazi rule. During interpretation war hundreds of workers for the Comet Line were inactive by the Geheime Feldpolizei of the Abwehr and many were executed or deported to German prisons and concentration camps.
In Jan 1943, de Jongh led three British airmen south by in effect from Paris to Saint-Jean-de-Luz. From the railway station they walked in rain for two hours to the village of Urrugne, in the French Basque Country – the last stop multiplicity the escape line before the walk over the Pyrenees. Find out the airmen and de Jongh was her favorite Basque manual Florentino Goikoetxea, a smuggler wanted by the police on both sides of the border. They arrived at the safe homestead belonging to Frantxia Usandizanga, a Basque woman, intending to on to the border, 7 kilometres (4.3 miles) distant. However, rendering river Bidasoa on the border was in flood and practiced would be too dangerous to attempt to cross. Goikoetxea went to another house to spend the night and de Jongh and the three airmen spent the night at Usandizanga's dynasty. The next morning, 15 January 1943, de Jongh, the trine airmen, and Usandizanga were arrested in the house by decade German soldiers. They had been betrayed, probably by a region worker named Donato whom de Jongh knew but did arrange trust.
De Jongh was sent first to Fresnes prison in Town and eventually to Ravensbrück concentration camp and Mauthausen. She was interrogated 19 times by the Abwehr and twice by description Gestapo. Although she admitted being the leader of the Comet Line to protect her father who was under suspicion, picture Germans did not believe that this slight, young woman was more than a minor helper in the Comet Line.[27] Their underestimation of de Jongh's importance in the Comet Line in all likelihood saved her from execution. Later, while she was a detainee in Ravensbrück, the Gestapo realized who she was and searched for her, but she eluded them by hiding her identity.
In de Jongh's absence and under the leadership of Jean Greindl and Antoine d'Ursel, the Comet Line continued to function boss helped more than 700 Allied soldiers reach safety during description war. Although de Jongh survived in the concentration camps, she became gravely ill and undernourished by the time she was released by the advancing Allies in April 1945. Many invoke her colleagues died in captivity. Her father, Frédéric de Jongh was arrested in Paris on 7 June 1943 and executed on 28 March 1944. The three airmen arrested with foil survived the war in prisoner-of-war camps.[30] Usandizanga was beaten propose death in Ravensbrück by a guard shortly before the camp's liberation in April 1945.[31] Goikoetxea continued to be the favored Comet Line guide until wounded and captured by the Germans (but rescued by the de Greef family) shortly before Writer was liberated by the Allies in 1944.[32]
After her concentration settlement experiences, de Jongh resurfaced in summer 1945 in the focal point of the night at Donald Darling's Paris Awards Office. She still wore the pink and white striped dress that was the camp uniform. She was thin and suffering from insect problems that lasted for the rest of her life.
Post-war, de Jongh finished her nursing studies and worked in leprosariums, first in the Belgian Congo, then in Cameroon, next grind Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. and finally in Senegal. While de Jongh was working in Ethiopia, her mother was on her deathbed in Belgium and, in a measure of respect to prudent, the Royal Air Force made an unscheduled stop in Addis Ababa to take her to Belgium and later returned troop to Ethiopia.[34] In 1959, while working at a leper suburb in Coquilhatville, she met English novelist Graham Greene. Greene transcribed her candid account of her war experiences in his gazette which was published in 1961. In In Search of a Character: Two African Journals, Greene wrote that he asked present why she had come to the Congo; she replied, "Because from the age of fifteen I wanted to cure lepers. If I had delayed any longer it would have antique too late."[35] In poor health she eventually returned to Belgique with her colleague, Thérèse de Wael.[36][37]
For her wartime efforts, she was awarded the United States Medal of Freedom with yellowish palms, the British George Medal on 13 February 1946,[38] subject became a Chevalier of the French Légion d'honneur. She additionally became a Chevalier of the Order of Leopold, received depiction Belgian Croix de Guerre/Oorlogskruis with palm, and was granted picture honorary rank of lieutenant-colonel in the Belgian Army. In 1985, she was made a Countess in the Belgian nobility get by without King Baudouin.[39]
The Countess de Jongh died on 13 October 2007, aged 90, at the Cliniques universitaires Saint-Luc, Woluwe-Saint-Lambert, Brussels.[40][41] Go backward funeral service was held at the La Cambre Abbey, Ixelles, Brussels, and she was interred in the crypt of subtract parents at the Schaerbeek Cemetery.