Gonsette Alphonse & Emilie (Seymers)

Gonsette, Alphonse Gonsette-Seymers, Emilie Alphonse and Emilie Gonsette from Gosselies, north of Charleroi, as well as their son Emile, were members of the Belgian underground M.N.B. In 1942, Emile was arrested by the Gestapo with seven other students, and shot in Charleroi. In spite of the fact that their house was under constant surveillance by the Gestapo, when Miss Dessent of the Resistance approached them in 1943 with a request to take in a two-year-old Jewish boy whose mother had been arrested, they did not hesitate for one moment. Young Simon Weissblum was a sickly child and twice needed an operation during the war while staying in their house. The surgeon, Dr. Perçoit, refused payment when he learned that the boy was Jewish, and kept him in the hospital for a couple of weeks. Simon remained for more than a year in the home of the Gonsettes who treated him as their own child, but kept showing him the picture of his mother, lest he forget her. When his mother came to look for him after the war, she too was invited to remain in their household for a few months. After the war, the Gonsettes also turned down the offer of payment for the sheltering of Simon Weissblum. When his son was born, Simon named him after the martyred Emile Gonsette, son of his foster parents, as an appreciation of his rescuers . On November 14, 1974, Yad Vashem recognized Alphonse Gonsette and Emilie Gonsette-Seymers as Righteous Among the Nations.