Wittelsbach Elisabeth

Elisabeth, Queen-Mother of Belgium On August 1, 1942, Queen-Mother Elisabeth of Belgium, mother of King Léopold III, welcomed representatives of the Association des Juifs en Belgique (AJB), Eugène Hellendael, Lazare Liebmann (who had taken the initiative to the meeting), and Salomon Van den Berg, into her royal palace in Brussels, which was situated almost next to the German headquarters. They told her about the atrocities that were being committed – about the imprisonment conditions in the Mechelen/Malines transit camp and about the elderly people, the children and babies who were being cut off from their families and sent to Germany. The Queen –Mother promised her visitors that she would do everything in her power to stop the arrests and to protect the Belgian Jews from deportation to Poland. Queen-Mother Elisabeth turned directly to Hitler – via the Italian royal family and the Red Cross - in order to request that Jews not be deported. In a telegram from Berlin, dated July 4, 1942, she was promised that the Jews with Belgian citizenship would not be deported or separated from their families, and that those who were under arrest in Mechelen/Malines, awaiting deportation could receive visitors. This answer was handed on to the representatives of the AJB. Baron De Streel, the Queen-Mother’s secretary, drew to their attention that they were only talking about a promise and that the Queen-Mother would continue to follow the fate of her Jewish subjects. On October 30, 1942, the Germans had arrested the children in the Wezembeek orphanage, but after Queen-Mother Elisabeth pushed the Germans on this issue, this group of children was released. In May 1943, Queen-Mother Elisabeth visited a hospital in Borgerhout (Antwerp), which apparently caused the Germans to give permission to about 80 Jewish elderly and sick to stay there. In June 1943, the Queen-Mother protested once again regarding the Belgian Jews imprisoned in Mechelen/Malines, and about three hundred ofthem were released at that moment. Queen Elisabeth also intervened in a number of individual cases. However, the Germans did not keep their promises: most of the Jewish with Belgian nationality were rounded up and arrested in one swoop on September 3, 1943, (“Operation Iltis”) and sent to camps. In spite of the meager results, and in spite of the fact that her intervention related to a limited number of Jews, these interventions by a member of a royal family in Europe on behalf of Jews was unparalleled. On May 18, 1965, Yad Vashem recognized Queen-Mother Elisabeth of Belgium as Righteous Among the Nations.