Two posts ago, on November 18, I wrote about the arrest of a young Dutchman named Paul.  Although he was in charge of daily operations for the Comite and knew the names of other resisters and the hiding places of many Jews, the Germans thought he was caught by accident and of little account.

His colleagues in the Comité knew better, of course.  They decided that, at least from the standpoint of security, Paul had been doing too much.  So they split his job in two in hopes of making it harder for the Germans to roll up the Comité.   From then on, the work was divided into “sociaalwerk” (social work) of hiding fugitives and “transportwerk” (transport work) of escorting fugitives out of Brussels on their way to Spain or Switzerland.    In theory, at least, no one who helped with the sociaalwerk should have known any addresses or details about the transportwerk.    They also set about devising a new code system for keeping track of fugitives hiding in and around Brussels.

This was easier said than done because the Comité, like most resistance groups, was chronically short of personnel.  A few individuals worked in both areas, but most did not.  For the division to work, the sociaalwerk and the transportwerk each needed separate HQ in the city.  The Comite continued to use an address on the rue du Trone for the sociaalwerk.  It’s main advantage was entrances and exits on two different streets.   For the transportwerk, they rented an entire pension or boarding house on the rue Franklin.

Nowadays the neighborhood of the rue Franklin is distinguished by the headquarters of the European Union, although it had no such distinction during the war.   The rue Franklin is a residential street of typically narrow but tall houses.  You have to walk up a flight of steps to ring the bell at the boarding house.

From December 1942 to March 1944, the pension housed a number of the young Dutch resisters associated with the Comité as well as transient fugitives including Allied aviators, at least one Jewish family, and Engelandvaarders.   The Comité kept its forgery atelier there as well.  The landlady continued to cook and clean for the boarders as she would have for more ordinary guests.   American aviators who mention her in their escape and evasion report, describe her as a complainer who was interested only in the money.   The Dutchmen who knew her found her to be charming and overworked.   Of course she spoke French and possibly Dutch, but not English, so it would have been hard for Americans to have any sort of meaningful or nuanced conversation with her.

Sadly, we will never know her own view of why she allowed her boarding house to be used as a resistance safe house or how she felt about the people who hid there.   She was arrested in the German raid on 28 February 1944, deported to the concentration camps, and gassed at Ravensbrück in January 1945.  She was 55 years old.