Jacquemart Athanase & Maria (Collard); Sister: Marie

Robert, Father Edouard Robert-Habay, Alix Jacquemart, Athanase Jacquemart-Collard, Maria Jacquemart, Marie Hershele and Rivka Kohn lived in Brussels with their two daughters. In 1942, a Red Cross volunteer helped them to get twelve-year-old Hena and ten-year-old Paula admitted to a colony for needy children in Bois d’Arlon. In August 1942, five days after the girls had left their home, their parents were arrested and eventually deported to Auschwitz where they perished. When the children’s colony was closed, the Red Cross volunteer took Hena and Paula Kohn to Father Edouard Robert, who worked in the Resistance and helped Jewish children to find hiding-places with Catholic families in the Ardennes region. Robert also forged identification cards and distributed ration cards, stolen at the town hall, to families who sheltered Jewish children. Father Robert placed Paula in Le Sart, a village near Hamipré, (both not far from Neufchâteau, Luxembourg province) and Hena first in an orphan’s home, but subsequently with Athanase and Maria Jacquemart, in Neufchâteau, a family with three children. After about a year, Hena went to live with the mother of Father Robert, Alix Robert-Habay. Hena stayed with her until the liberation in September 1944. Alix Robert also temporarily sheltered Hena’s teenage cousin Semmy Miller (renamed Jean Desmet), who after a while was moved by Robert to Marie Jacquemart, Athanase’s sister, who lived alone on a farm in Straimont, south of Neufchâteau. She took care of Semmy until the end of the war. Semmy, for his part, helped her with work on the farm. The cover story was that Semmy was a distant relative who needed fresh air for reasons of health. Father Edouard often visited him. “It was always a joyous moment to be in his company,” Semmy stated in his testimony to Yad Vashem. Some of the other Jews aided by Robert include François and Marcel Shumiliver; Rosette, Sabine and Paulette Feldman; and Betty and Anne Lekovoretz. On July25, 1999, Yad Vashem recognized Father Edouard Robert, his mother Alix Robert-Habay, Athanase Jacquemart and Maria Jacquemart-Collard, and Marie Jacquemart, as Righteous Among the Nations.