Schueren Edgard & Marie

Schueren, Edgar Schueren, Marie Marie and Edgar Schueren, a childless, middle-aged couple lived in Liege, Belgium. Edgar was an architect and Marie a housewife who raised rabbits in her garage. In summer 1942, Marie met 14-year-old Thea Scheiner on the street, and after ascertaining that she was Jewish, invited the teenager to visit her. Thea Scheiner, her mother, Judith, and father, Isaac, were originally from Germany. In summer 1939, Isaac left Germany clandestinely for Belgium. He settled in Antwerp and informed his wife that she should find a way to leave Germany with Thea and join him. After a difficult journey they managed to join him. Belgium had a policy of giving political asylum and temporary resident ID cards to all who managed to cross the border successfully. In 1940, the Scheiners applied for affidavits to join family members in the USA. They were to get their visas in August, but Germany invaded Belgium, Holland and France in May 1940. The Belgian government arrested all male German nationals as potential spies. Isaac Scheiner was arrested, imprisoned and then sent to an internment camp in southern France. Mother and daughter stayed in Antwerp until some time in summer 1942, when they moved to Liege at the invitation of their former neighbor. (Meanwhile the Belgian government had released the previously arrested non-Jewish German foreign nationals; the Jewish ones were kept locked up. Isaac Scheiner was sent to Auschwitz in autumn 1942, and murdered.) One day in autumn 1942, right after the Jewish holidays, Judith and Thea were on their way to meet someone near the synagogue, when an acquaintance they met warned them that the Germans were arresting the Jews in that area. They turned on their heel in the direction of their home, where they saw a German truck in front of the building. A neighbor told them that all the Jewish residents had been arrested and the Germans were waiting for them. They covered their yellow stars on theirjackets and went to the home of a woman who lived nearby and whom they knew had helped hide two Jewish children. They stayed there until the immediate danger had passed and then contacted Mrs. Schueren. Marie arranged a place to stay for the Scheiners, as well as two Jewish friends – Mrs. Klara Silber and Mrs.Martha Weinman – who had joined them. They were accommodated in an attic apartment in a residential building, around the corner from the home of the Schuerens. Marie would come to visit, bringing food and books. She brought work for Thea, who had learned to repair torn stockings, and earned a bit of money mending them. The four women remained in the attic until liberation in September 1944. After the war, Judith and Thea (later Stern) received their visas and moved to the USA, from where they corresponded with the Schuerens. Mrs. Weinman was reunited with her children in Belgium, and Mrs, Silber was reunited with her sons in Canada. On February 24, 2009, Yad Vashem recognized Marie and Edgar Schueren as Righteous Among the Nations.