Dutch-Paris’s clandestine medical needs were different in Paris than in Brussels. The Comité in Brussels was directly sheltering and supporting hundreds of Jews hiding in the city. In Paris, Dutch-Paris hid fugitives of various sorts temporarily while they moved through northern France on their way to Spain or Switzerland. Which is not to say that they didn’t sometimes need medical care.

For example, an American aviator developed a skin condition while he was in Paris. It was bad enough that his helpers did not think he could continue on his journey until it had healed. So they had to find a place for him to stay after his companions left on a night train for Toulouse. They also had to find a doctor and medication for him. They did find a doctor who was willing to take the risk of coming to his hiding place to treat him, and who, of course, they paid. One of the older women in the group nursed him.

This same woman, whom we’ll call Micheline, agreed to house an English aviator and nurse him. He was suffering from a recurrence of his childhood polio, probably brought on when his fighter plane crashed in Northern France. He was not incapacitated, but his legs were not strong enough to make the two or three night trek through the Pyrenees in the winter. The leaders of Dutch-Paris decided to send him to Switzerland instead, where he would be safe and receive proper medical attention.

Unfortunately, he was still in the resister’s apartment when the Germans raided it at the end of February 1944. They were caught red handed with an aviator – what the Germans called a “Luftterrorist” (air terrorist). They were not treated kindly by their interrogators.

The Englishman, however, survived the war and sent a letter of thanks to his nurse. She received it when she got back from the concentration camp at Ravensbrück in the summer of 1945.