She was a teacher.
But that day, she became something much greater.
Brussels, 1942.
During the Nazi occupation, a young schoolteacher noticed something that broke her heart:
some of her students were wearing yellow stars on their chests.
It was the mark imposed on Jewish children.
A symbol of shame, meant to single them out for persecution.
Andrée Geulen couldn’t accept it.
The next day, she walked into the classroom and did something simple—but revolutionary:
she ordered all the children, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, to wear a smock.
That way, no star would be visible.
No child would be distinguished from another.
They were just that: children. Not targets.
That silent gesture was only the beginning.
Andrée joined the Committee for the Defense of Jews, a clandestine network that rescued children by hiding them in safe homes.
Her mission was heartbreaking:
to convince desperate parents to part with their children,
to save them.
Many would never see them again.
But it was the only choice.
It was the only hope.
She hid twelve children in her own school.
And kept teaching.
As if nothing was happening.
Until one day, in May 1943,
the Nazis stormed into the school.
They dragged children from their beds, checked names, interrogated teachers.
One officer, with a voice dripping with contempt, asked her:
“Aren’t you ashamed to teach Jewish children?”
She looked him in the eye and replied, without trembling:
“And you? Aren’t you ashamed to wage war against them?”
Andrée Geulen saved over a thousand children.
She never sought recognition.
She simply did what she believed was right.
She died at one hundred years old,
with a life stitched together by courage, compassion…
and a school smock that dared to defy horror.