Feyerick Yvonne (Nevejean)

Nèvejean-Feyerick, Yvonne Yvonne Nèvejean headed the National Agency for Children, known by its acronym ONE (Oeuvre Nationale de l’Enfance), which during the occupation period was transformed into an important center for helping Jewish children to find secure sheltering places. Not only did she welcome Jewish children into all the many ONE institutions, but she also looked for other hiding places for them whenever necessary. Assisted by a wide circle of friends and thanks to her persuasive talent, she managed to enlist heads of children’s homes, whether Catholic, Protestant, or other, to support her rescue work. Thus, she created an immense network of various hiding places for Jewish children. As an executive member of the secret Jewish Defense Committee – CDJ, Nèvejean was privy to changing circumstances and emergency situations. As head of the ONE, she also knew what facilities were available to her through ONE, and was extremely knowledgeable about all the children’s homes, summer camps, rehabilitation centers; this helped her with the speedy placement of children and thus the avoidance of any unnecessary delays. Yvonne Jospa, who was in charge of the children’s department of the CDJ recalls that she was in daily contact with Nèvejean, and they discussed ways to find, via ONE, possible addresses to place Jewish children, as well as distributing money and clothes to the children in their care. Nèvejean selected appropriate CDJ people, who were assigned to visit families hiding Jews and pay them for the upkeep of the children in their care and at the same time check on the care and living condition of the Jewish children. We will never know the full extent of Nèvejean’s work, but there is no doubt that many hundreds of children (and perhaps even more) benefited from her ONE operation. She also assisted the orphanages who were administratively subordinate to the AJB, but were under the supervision of ONE, and she allowed them to transfer funds to children’shomes that had falsified their list of occupants by several times in order to cover for the Jews secretly hidden there. This financial assistance from ONE was significant and part of the money was also utilized to cover upkeep expenses for children in hiding. Névejean was especially active in fundraising. At one time she secretly turned to the management of the Société Générale Bank and managed to have them contribute a monthly allowance towards her efforts. When she realized that this support would not suffice, together with the underground group Services et Renseignements, where she was a member, she turned to the Belgian government-in- exile in London for help, and it responded by clandestinely sending her the additional funds, some via the banker and economist Jules Dubois-Pelerin*. Some of the ONE operatives who assisted Névejean in her work include Mrs. Volont and Mr. Stacq, who headed the Summer Camps department. In addition, some of the ONE nurses secretly visited homes to care for the hidden Jewish children. When the Germans raided the Wezembeek Jewish Children’s Home on October 30, 1942, Nèvejean successfully appealed to Queen Mother Elisabeth to use her influence on the military governor, General Von Falkenhausen, to have the children released. Upon Nèvejean’s death in 1987, in a eulogy to her, Yvonne Jospa praised her dedication to the rescue of Jewish children, and added that Nèvejean was “driven by her love for children, her antipathy towards any form of discrimination, and her being in defiance against the Nazi occupation. Her paramount concern was to provide the same opportunities for Jewish children as for non-Jewish ones.” Towards the end of the German occupation, in August 1944, Nèvejean received an urgent request to find new safe hiding places for all the Jewish children under the care of the AJB. This, after they had learned that the Germans, before withdrawing from the country, planned to arrest all the children in Brussels in one swoopand send them to the concentration camps. Nèvejean recruited everyone she could to help with this urgent rescue mission, including phoning every possible sheltering place, including monasteries and orphanages, and speaking with anyone with influence in order to find additional hiding places in homes that were already filled beyond capacity. In 1996, the Belgian Postal Authority issued a stamp in her honor. On February 16, 1965, Yad Vashem recognized Yvonne Nèvejean as Righteous Among the Nations.